They were the
forgotten heroes of Dunkirk, tens of thousands
of brave British and
French troops who sacrificed themselves to evacuate more than 300,000 of
their comrades in one of the most daring rescue missions of World War
Two.
But
as the men they saved returned to the safety of UK shores, those who
were left behind endured brutal and untold horrors at the hands of the
Nazis.
Rounded
up as Prisoners of War, humiliated officers and soldiers stripped of
their rank were forced to drink ditch water and eat putrid food. Now a
series of never-before-seen images give a haunting glimpse into the hard
lives endured by the 80,000 Allied POWs captured after the evacuation
of Dunkirk.
Harbour
towns including De Panne were left in total ruin, abandoned army
vehicles littered the streets and beaches, and fallen British soldiers
were committed to meager graves marked only by simple wooden crosses.
French
colonial troops, who were drafted from Senegal, Mauritania and Niger,
were even made to pose with German troops who saw the men as little more
than a curious novelty.
Social
historian Matthew Smaldon is now sharing the photographs taken by
German soldiers to show the reality of what the captured men went
through as depicted in Christopher Nolan's wartime film Dunkirk
featuring Tom Hardy and Cillian Murphy.
The
father-of-two from Abingdon, Oxfordshire, said: 'These were all taken
by German soldiers either during or shortly after the campaign in France
in 1939/1940, and show the destruction in Dunkirk and De Panne further
up the coast.'
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