Dunkirk managed to make a beach claustrophobic.
That, and as you said, EliRoom8, that claustrophobic fear...men on the long pier or topside on a vessel with no place to go, no place to hide as the Nazi planes came in to bomb and strafe. Your only defense was to make yourself as small as you could, hopefully behind the flesh and blood of another man who you hoped would stop a round or shrapnel before it got to you.