THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 1
My promise to Chloe: we would slow down in Dunkerque, and relax for a couple days after the intensity of London. Aside from a history museum about the evacuation of soldiers during the Second World War, what else could we possibly do? But our hotel room was dismal and stinky, and so into Dunkerque we went…
ODD HOTEL LE PLAGE
The peculiar hotel lobby, with breakfast buffet and art in a mezzanine area, and with a 1950s -style, wood applique covered welcome desk on the ground floor, seemed more like a cluttered home than a lobby. Art deco lamps and china, antique metal tables, porcelain knickknacks, stacked oil paintings and old prints were pushed into a third of the upstairs, the buffet of orange juice, slices of bland cheddar cheese, old kiwis and stale croissants and thre small tables took up the other third. When I asked the proprietor about the “art”, he told us he had an art business on the side. He explained that the largest painting — of two cavorting lovers, the women with flowing, blond curly hair and a bared breast — was painted in the 1950s and used to hang in the Mayor’s office in Toulouse. How different the French are from North Americans.
THE TOWN OF DUNKERQUE
With local map in hand, Chloe and I headed through a quiet neighborhood of three-story homes to Villa Zeigler and its adjacent park. Built in 1880, it is one of the only wooden villas remaining in Dunkerque. The Villa, a public office today, is not open to visitors. A closed metal gate excluded entry into the unkept grounds. It felt haunted, dark and rundown. We passed only a few people, more appeared as the streets broadened and homes became apartment complexes with commercial businesses on the ground floors. Church bells rang every now and then, reminding me of Venice and time clocked by bells.
A large canal cuts into Dunkerque from the North Sea. Along it is a boardwalk with markers memorialize Dunkerque’s history. We would quickly realize that our perception of Dunkerque was based on Hollywood. Like many North Americans, we knew of the evacuation of Malo-les-Bains during WWII, but nothing of its destruction during WWI and its long, troubled history as a targeted, commercial trading port.
The town was strangely quiet but the tourist office was open. The woman working inside told us it was All Saints Day, thus the near empty streets, and closed shops. Outside under the shadow of the Saint Elio Belfry, which is 58 meters high, we stood in a square surrounded by government buildings. The Belfry, constructed in the 1400s and renovated in the 2000s, contains many bells that play melodies and is a tourist destination because it can be climbed. Not for us, though, instead we entered a church across the plaza where a service was underway. Perhaps it was the lack of people, and the many historical markers, but the town itself felt heavy with a weight of hardship and anxiety.
THE MUSEUM OF THE HISTORY OF DUNKERQUE
The Museum of the History of Dunkirk and Operation Dynamo, as it was coined by the British commanders, is at the end of the canal near the beach. Contained in an old WWII brick bunker, the rooms are dank and dark, the walls thick. It smells of wet earth, and conjures a soldier’s life hiding underground.
The exhibition begins with a video with evocative archival footage. 350,000 men waited on the shores of Dunkerque to be evacuated as the Luftwaffe bombed the port town. In nine days, between the end of May and the beginning of June 1944, nearly all of the soldiers were removed. But the bombing sank boats, destroyed 90% of the city of Dunkerque and left 16,000 French soldiers and 1,000 British soldiers dead. And though common knowledge to the French few others know that soon after French soldiers were evacuated to the UK, many were returned to France, where they were imprisoned or murdered.
MALO BEACH
Malo Beach reminded me of Long Beach in California, one of the longest and widest beaches I’ve seen. But Malo Beach is even wider and longe. It’s expansiveness, in length and breadth, dwarfs the human form. Imagining tens of thousands of soldiers waiting to be saved is easy to envision.
