Dunkirk – A Special Evening Event
The Keep Military Museum in Dorchester will be hosting a special evening on the 9th of May 2025 from 18:30-21:00.
The event will be held at the Dorchester Army Reserve Centre and will include a drinks reception followed by a special talk on the Dorsetshire Regiment at Dunkirk. It will be hosted and presented by author and military historian Christopher Jary and battlefield guide and military historian Lt Col James Porter.
The first of the Dorsetshire Regiment’s four fighting battalions to go to war was the 2nd Battalion, who left Aldershot for France in September 1939. On 10th May 1940 they moved up into Belgium to meet the advancing Germans, who had invaded neutral Holland and Belgium on their way to attack France. When the French and Belgian armies collapsed around them, they conducted a fighting withdrawal towards Béthune. Here, the Dorsets were ordered to defend the La Bassée Canal (below Festubert) to enable their comrades to withdraw.
This talk, marking the 80th anniversary of VE-Day, describes the Dorsetshire Regiment’s first action of the war. It includes two stories: the 2nd Dorsets’ successful but costly defence and then the remarkable tale of how their elderly Commanding Officer personally navigated and led his survivors back to Dunkirk and home to Margate. Had the Dorsets and the BEF not been evacuated from France, the war would have been lost in this first campaign and there would have been no Allied Victory in Europe to commemorate then or now.
The story is told in two books: Straight on for Tokyo, Lieutenant-Colonel Geoffrey White’s war history of the 2nd Battalion, and They Couldn’t Have Done Better, Christopher Jary’s history of the Dorsetshire Regiment 1939-67.
Places for this event will be strictly limited, so all tickets are sold on a first come, first served basis. All proceeds from the evening will go to support The Keep Military Museum, a registered charity devoted to the military history of the counties of Devon and Dorset.
The venue – the Dorchester Army Reserve Centre – is in Poundbury Road, Dorchester DT1 1TA. The Top O’Town car park is a couple of minutes’ walk away and free of charge from 6pm. The drinks reception will start at 6.30pm, followed by the talk at 7pm.
Our Speakers
Christopher Jary has written twelve books, including one about RAF Bomber Command and eight about the Hampshire, Devonshire and Dorsetshire Regiments. His 231 Malta Brigade Trilogy tells the story of the 2nd Devons, 1st Hampshires and 1st Dorsets in Malta, Sicily & Italy, and on D-Day. So Red a Road, tells the story of 130 Brigade (the 7th Hampshires and 4th & 5th Dorsets) from Normandy to Bremen and includes the Arnhem battle. His father, Sydney, fought as a subaltern in the 4th Somerset Light Infantry at Arnhem and won the Military Cross a month later.
James Porter was commissioned into The Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, commanded 5 RRF and served for a total of 41 years, the last 8 as Commander Defence Training Estates South West. He delivers a large range of talks on military history subjects, is the founder of the Wessex Military History group and is a battlefield guide. The son of a distinguished Devon officer, Roly, who served in Malta and Sicily and won the Military Cross in Italy. James played a major part in producing Roy’s Boys, Christopher Jary’s book on Sicily.