Dunkirk

Photos Section

Alex (played by Harry Styles), Gibson (played by Aneurin Barnard) and Tommy (played by Fionn Whitehead) sit on the beaches of Dunkirk in a scene from the film.

(© Warner Brothers)

The film’s three Spitfires in formation.

(© Warner Brothers)

British destroyers sailing home to England with an RAF escort.

(© Popperfoto/Getty Images)

In the film, a Spitfire is chased by a Messerschmitt 109 as they pass a representation of HMS Keith.

(© Warner Brothers)

Troops in long hopeful queues waiting for little ships to carry them to larger ships offshore.

(© Hulton Deutsch/Corbis Historical via Getty Images)

A scene from the film: troops queuing for the little ships as casualties are taken away.

(© Warner Brothers)

Director Christopher Nolan with Fionn Whitehead, playing Tommy.

(© Warner Brothers)

Allied troops hoping for deliverance.

(© Ullstein Bild/Getty Images)

The mole, intended as a breakwater to prevent sand blocking the harbour, was substantially rebuilt for the film. Here, soldiers stand on part of the surviving mole.

(© Warner Brothers)

Troops walking along the mole. The wooden walkway, with its high rail, is clearly visible as are the crisscross piles beneath.

(© Popperfoto/Getty Images)

A photograph taken by Sub-Lieutenant John Crosby [see Chapter Eight] on board Clyde paddle steamer Oriole. It is likely that these soldiers, some up to their necks in water, were standing on one of the submerged lorry piers built by the Royal Engineers.

(© Time Life Pictures/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images)

A lorry pier as recreated by production designer Nathan Crowley and his team. ‘It was an enormous learning curve,’ says Nathan. These piers were originally built, in May and June 1940, by men such as George Wagner and Norman Prior by driving lorries down to the shoreline, filling them with sandbags, shooting their tyres out, and laying planks across their roofs.

Some of the Little Ships, each weighed down with evacuated soldiers.

In the film, the soldiers load up on one of the surviving Little Ships, the New Britannic, recreating the rescue seventy-six years later.

The mole as it looks today at low tide. Only a few of the original crisscross piles are still visible.

Captain William Tennant, later Admiral Sir William Tennant. Arriving on 27 May to coordinate the evacuation as Senior Naval Officer Dunkirk, he encountered a chaotic scene. Later that night, he sent a ship alongside the mole as an experiment. It was a successful experiment: the vast majority of soldiers rescued over the next seven and a half days would be lifted from the mole.

George Wagner photographed at home in Lichfield in November 2016. George was a Royal Engineer, a keen dancer and a beach motorcyclist who helped to build one of the lorry piers. ‘We wanted to survive as a country,’ he says. ‘It was about comradeship and everyone together helping.’

The author stands beside one of Crested Eagle’s guns on the beach near Bray Dunes.