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Series
Duty Calls is James Holland’s young-adult sequence about teenage servicemen caught inside the major British battles of 1940. Duty Calls: Dunkirk follows the under-age Private Johnny Hawke through the collapse of the British campaign in France and the evacuation from Dunkirk, presenting combat from the limited viewpoint of an inexperienced infantryman.
The published sequence also includes Duty Calls: Battle of Britain, which follows young fighter pilots during the air campaign over Britain. Only the Dunkirk record is present in this export. The series uses direct battlefield detail, fear and moral uncertainty to introduce younger readers to events often reduced to patriotic legend.
Reading order
Private Johnny Hawke lies about his age to join the British Army and is sent to France before he has the experience to understand either military routine or the scale of the German offensive. When the Allied front collapses in May 1940, his platoon is drawn…