As I read about New Orleans and the failure of the evacuation efforts I am reminded of Dunkirk. If you don’t know the story it is an inspiring one. At the beginning of WW II the British and French Armies were trapped by the Germans at Dunkirk in North-East France. What happened still gives me chills when I think of it. An army of military and civilian boats, many of them small pleasure and fishing boats captained by fishermen and private citizens evacuated over 330,000 Allied troops across the English Channel. I urge you to read this account.
When our Dunkirk happened and the citizens of New Orleans were trapped by the rising waters or even before that when the poor needed evacuating before the hurricane, imagine if the mayor or the governor had called for a citizen army to help evacuate New Orleans. There is no doubt in my mind that a call for an American Dunkirk response would have resulted in awesome results. We would have risen to the occasion. If the English government had not called for every small boat available to help evacuate Dunkirk, Dunkirk would have been a New Orleans kind of disaster instead of one of Britain’s finest hours.
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