Bergues-Furnes Canal
The Bergues-Furnes Canal is the last major water obstacle before the coast, the final defensive line that the retreating British army must cross to reach the evacuation beaches at Dunkirk. For Robbie Turner and the two corporals who have followed him for days across the French countryside, the canal represents both a physical barrier and a psychological threshold: beyond it lies the narrowing corridor to the sea, but also the organized perimeter held by the Coldstream Guards, who are clean-shaven, stone-eyed, and silently contemptuous of the filthy, disorganized rabble trailing by.
Location and Defensive Significance
The canal runs east-west across the flat, marshy landscape of northern France, and its bridges are the only viable crossing points for the thousands of soldiers and refugees converging on Dunkirk. When Robbie, Mace, and Nettle approach the bridge after a long afternoon of walking, they see that the crossing is held by the Coldstream Guards, who have established two neatly sandbagged machine-gun posts covering the approach. On the far bank, evenly spaced white-painted stones mark out a path to a hut being used as an orderly room, and the Guards are well dug in along their section, with waterfront houses commandeered, roof tiles punched out, and windows sandbagged for machine-gun slits. A fierce sergeant is keeping order on the bridge, turning back a lieutenant on a motorbike, refusing to allow any equipment or vehicles across, and pulling out men for perimeter defense duties.
Crossing the Canal
Robbie and the corporals see what is happening while they are still a good way back. Mace warns Robbie that the Guards will take him for the infantry, and the three men stagger forward together, with Robbie putting his arms round the corporals' shoulders and letting his head droop as they cross the bridge. He sees nothing of the duty sergeant's ferocious gaze, though he feels its heat, and hears the barked command that pulls some unfortunate just behind him out to help hold off the onslaught. While his head is lowered, Robbie sees a long black barge slipping under the bridge in the direction of Furnes in Belgium, with the boatman sitting at his tiller smoking a pipe, two boys in the prow bending over an upturned bike, and a line of washing—including women's smalls—hanging out to dry. The smell of cooking, of onions and garlic, rises from the boat. After crossing, Robbie and the corporals pass the whitewashed rocks, a reminder of training camp and all the bull, and in the orderly hut a phone is ringing.
Aftermath and Significance
Once across the canal, the land is flat for miles, and the three men sit down on a rusty seed drill to watch the defeated army walk by. The idea is to get in among a completely fresh crowd so that Robbie's sudden recovery does not attract the attention of an officer. Many men who pass are irritated at not finding the beach just beyond the canal, as though it were a failure of planning. Robbie knows from the map that there are another seven miles to go, and once they are on the move again, those are the hardest, the dreariest they have walked that day. The wide featureless land denies all sense of progress, and though the late afternoon sun is slipping through the trailing edges of the oil cloud, it is warmer than ever. They see planes high over the port dropping their bombs, and there are Stuka attacks right over the beach they are heading toward. The canal crossing is the last moment of relative order before the chaos of the beach, the last point at which the army's discipline still holds, and the last time Robbie sees anything resembling the normal world—a barge with a family, cooking, laundry—before the final ordeal of the evacuation begins.
