While watching Ken Burns’ documentary on the American Revolution, I was struck by the parallels (at least in kind, if not in scope) between the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) from the beaches of Dunkirk early in the Second World War and the escape of American troops from Brooklyn Heights after the disastrous battle of Long Island in August 1776. You might call the Brooklyn Heights evacuation “Little Dunkirk.”
In the 1940 German panzers split the French and British armies and forced the British to retreat north to the French coast and the channel port of Dunkirk. During the retreat the BEF lost much of its heavy equipment, leaving an essentially lightly-armed infantry force. German troops, well equipped with tanks and artillery, closed in and seemed ready to destroy the BEF, which had its back the sea. The hopelessness of the BEF’s position is well demonstrated in Christopher Nolan’s film Dunkirk.
Inexplicably, however, the Germans halted and didn’t press their advantage. This gave the Royal Navy and the famous flotilla of small civilian craft time to extricate British and some French troops and get them across the Channel to Britain. The German pause allowed hundreds of thousands to fight again.
A similar pause, this time by the British army in 1776, allowed the bulk of George Washington’s Continental army to fight another day. In late August 1776 the British, along with German mercenary troops, fought a pitched battle against Americans in the then bucolic countryside of Brooklyn. The British outflanked and smashed the American rebels, who retreated (fled) north to prepared dug-in positions on Brooklyn Heights.
The British commander, General William Howe, moved his force into position to storm the heights and destroy the beaten and disorganized patriot army (or traitorous rebels from his point of view). Once in position, however, Howe paused his forces and did not attack.
Washington used this pause, aided by a providentially heavy fog, to ferry some 9,000 troops (the bulk of his army) across to Manhattan in the dark of night. When day arrived Howe and his officers saw that the Americans had escaped. The Americans still lost the subsequent series of battles and were forced to abandon New York City to the British, but they managed to escape destruction and fight another day. It was a “Little Dunkirk.”