THE SANDS OF DUNKIRK(319 pp.)Richard CollierDutton ($4.50).
As the battered tugboat churned into Ramsgate Harbor one day in 1940, the exhausted troops aboard noticed tricolor bunting in the streets. A French liaison officer, observing the welcome, could only wonder: "If this is the way the British celebrate a defeat, how do they celebrate a victory?"
The evacuation from Dunkirk of 338,226 British and French troops, soundly whipped by the German army but rescued by an improvised flotilla of 1,200 ships under week-long bombardment, was closer to triumph than to tragedy. By rights, the saga of Dunkirk deserves a Homer, but even in the...
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