By late May 1940 the German Army had raced across Northern France cutting the Allied armies in two. The British Expeditionary Force ,and thousands of French and Belgian soldiers, found themselves squeezed into a ever smaller pocket by the Wehrmacht while the Luftwaffe pounded them from the sky. For nine terrible days they held their ground until ,eventually, they had to evacuate. A quarter of a million men battled their way across the bullet-swept beaches to ships - and escape. This is the heroic story of what is simultaneously a terrible defeat and a stirring victory.