The wartime tunnels carved through the White Cliffs of Dover, Britain’s front line of defence, are ringing once again with the sound of German bombardment.
Reopened to the public, radio chatter echoes round the chalk walls and the damp air lingers in the corridors as if it was 1940.
“With the sound and the smell, all these sirens, you do get the feeling of how it was like in those days,” says 92-year-old Richard Sheen, who worked in the subterranean warren during World War II.
Dover, on the southeast coast of England, is the closest port to continental Europe and its giant white cliffs, visible from France, have been a bastion throughout the centuries.
The tunnels were first excavated more than 200 years ago and were brought back into service in World War II, housing the command centre that controlled naval operations in the English Channel and planned the Dunkirk evacuation. Between May 26 and June 4, 1940, some 338,000 British and French troops were rescued from Dunkirk in northeastern France, 75 kilometres across the English Channel from Dover.
A hastily-arranged flotilla of around 700 boats, including fishing vessels, pleasure crafts, paddle steamers and lifeboats, rescued Allied troops cut off by the invading German army.
More than 70 years later, the tunnels, around a kilometre long, once again house command bunkers, a radio room that transmitted false information to the Nazis, and the gun operation room where Sheen followed the trajectory of enemy aircraft on bombing missions over southern England. The World War II tunnels plunge visitors back into the frenetic activity of the time, with black, moving shadows of workers projected onto the white walls. “One of the great fears in the outbreak of World War II was the growing power of aircraft and aerial bombardments,” said Paul Pattison, the senior properties historian with the English Heritage national conservation body.
“Being 26 metres underground was a good choice of place to have your most important command functions. The tunnels get used by both the navy and the army for their important headquarters.”
During Dunkirk – code name Operation Dynamo – Mr Sheen said his job was to protect the returning ships by identifying their location on radar and passing this onto the gunsights. However, Britain soon found it did not have enough shallow water ships that were small enough to ferry fleeing soldiers between the Dunkirk beaches and the bigger transport boats.