The Royal British Legion takes veterans and relatives to France to remember those who lost their lives at Dunkirk or on HMT Lancastria. Sixty years ago Operation Dynamo, the operation to evacuate troops from Dunkirk, was launched. From 28th May to 4th June 1940, some 850 naval and civilian vessels crossed the Channel to take 228,000 men - including 112,000 French and Belgian soldiers - back to Britain. The evacuation was regarded as a miracle. Sixty years on pilgrims traveling with Remembrance Travel (The Royal British Legion's pilgrimage initiative) will be remembering those who fell in both World Wars, and especially those who lost their lives during the Dunkirk withdrawal. Sixty years ago when Operation Dynamo had ceased, men from the British Expeditionary Force and the Polish and Free French forces, expecting to be put ashore in England, were diverted to St Nazaire in Brittany. They were joined by soldiers and civilians who had missed the Dunkirk evacuation boats and by those escaping from the advancing Germans. Hurried orders were given for a new evacuation by sea, code-named Operation Aerial. Some claim that as many as 9,000 troops embarked HMT Lancastria, a troopship used for the evacuation. Only 2,447 people survived when the ship took several direct air hits. In his diary, Churchill called it: "the most terrible disaster in our naval history." The Government drew a curtain of secrecy across the event. Sixty years on pilgrims travelling with The Royal British Legion will visit the wreck site of HMT Lancastria to remember those who perished and throw their wreathes into the ocean.
