Today we went to Dover. And yes the cliffs are truly white. They're several hundred feet tall and run for 12 miles. They are made of chalk. And the reason they are white is that chunks of the rock are falling off all the time.
But the best thing about the cliffs is Dover Castle. It pretty well covers the whole hilltop behind the cliffs. The castle and yard - that's "bailey" to the English - are surrounded by a wall. Then, the outbuildings, ruins and rest of the hilltop are surrounded by an additional wall.
This castle would be *very* difficult to capture. It was built by Henry II both as a palace for him to stay in and as a lookout for invading parties coming by sea. Dover is right at the narrowest part of the English Channel and the span of the water is only 22 miles between the island and the continent. Henry would come and stay until things got "smelly", usually about 2 months, before moving on to smell up some other castle. He'd bring his whole court and they'd hunt, party, conduct business -- in other words, live and govern -- for so long as their activities did not overwhelm the castle.
Also inside the larger walls of the castle is the oldest standing ruin from the Romans. It's a lighthouse, or "pharos". They had two, one at the castle and one on the other side of the town of Dover. Ships could locate themselves by the two lights and knew to sail between them to get to the port.
But what we spent the most time on was underground. There are secret tunnels under the castle. The first ones were built in 1804 for barracks for soldiers in case Napoleon tried to invade. He was thinking about it for awhile, then decided not to. The tunnels were left behind.
They were used again in WWII, most notably for Operation Dynamo. Never heard of it? Sure you have. It was the rescue of the Allied soliders from Dunkirk. A fellow named Ramsay was installed with his team in the tunnels and they managed the logistics and all the details of getting 338,000 soldiers out of Dunquerque in 10 days in late May-early June 1940. It is still considered a miracle that they saved so many. Ramsey and his team did all the planning, ordering and communicating about how the small boats, the military boats and the covering planes were to operate and on what schedules. Did you know they lashed the small boats together and dragged them into Dunkirk with a tug boat? I didn't either. My guess is that a mass of 25-30 small boats lashed was easier to load and maneuver until they were filled up and ready to dash back to Dover. They had to evacuate as many as 1000 soldiers per hour to get out the huge numbers that they rescued; that's what, 170 or so per minute? Most of the soldiers were British, but they also came from Australia, New Zealand, and a total of 8 Allied countries. One of the unexpected good luck things that happened during those 10 days was that the seas were unusually quiet and stable for the entire period.
As the soldiers first got out of France, the injured ones came in to England through the tunnels in Dover for medical treatment. They had (I think) 8 wards and at least one surgery. The effort was to stabilize each wounded soldier and hopefully save his leg, or arm, or life, then he was sent on to a full hospital for rehab. They also got pilots who were injured during the airfights that made up the Battle of Britain.
The Battle of Britain is considered a major point in World War II as well. The Allied fighters did not stop any bombs from being dropped but they did prevent the RAF from being destroyed, and they slowed things down so much that any invasion of England had to be put on hold while the Germans fought in the Mediterranean and Russia.
Later in the war, the tunnels were used as a fake front to keep the Germans convinced that the Allies intended to invade at Calais. They kept Ramsay and all his team working hard in the tunnels, so the Germans would believe all the fakery the Allied command was putting out.
Their tour was done in a really interesting way. Of course, a film about it all was first. Then, they took us to the entry point for a wounded man, and we followed him all the way through surgery - we heard the conversations where the medics are waiting for "a friend to drop in" and they discuss where they might take him and his wound; he's being brought in, in pain and mumbling; the medics start down the hallway with him, and if there was bombing the lights flashed and we could hear explosions; the wounded man winds up in surgery with the surgeon fretting that the lights are down low and they must stop the arterial bleeding; then there are explosions and the lights go out; after that the overhead lights come on dimly but the surgical lights don't come on at all; so then the surgeon has to decide what minimal thing he could do so the soldier could be sent somewhere else. It really brought home a lot of being-there type reactions.
We got to see the kitchen, which smelled like stew was cooking; the communications room with banks of phone switchboards, enough to handle up to 610 calls, and with 2-3 telex machines as well; the map room for planes; the map rooms for ships; the barracks where people slept. I
n order to work in the tunnels, each person had to sign a War Office Secrecy document promising not to socialize with others outside their unit whether the persons worked in the tunnels or elsewhere. As a result, the tunnels were a big secret for most of the war.
The tunnels were also used during the cold war period. The British had twelve centers underground around the country. Each one was for a regional government in case of a nuclear attack. The national government would pretty much go dormant and the regional ones would take over. The government operating from Dover's tunnels would govern Kent, Sussex, southeastern England. The tunnels where those operations were set up are still not open to the public - secrecy and safety issues the guide said. The operations in the tunnels were not completely closed down and turned over as a historical site until 1984. The guide said the papers relating to activities in the tunnels are to be kept secret until 2048 or 2084, I guess depending on what activities are being revealed.
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