After Dunkirk

[Viktoria]

Yes Skoosh, that was related in a very frank programme about Dunkirk on TV at the commemoration time.
The French were not far away but not on the beaches or near enough to be effective I seem to remember .
I once had an argument with some kid in the tourist office in Dunkirk ,we asked for maps etc and directions to a memorial .
She pretended she did not know what we were talking about!
Eventually she said “  Oh you mean when you ran away,” WOW!  .

 ——I blazed up and said “But  we came back !” Plus a lot more etcetc.Not at all polite nor politically correct but she was quite subdued when I had finished
What a @#&£#@# Cheek .
We were really angry., and suggested she was not fit to work in such a place given her attitude .
There was a suggestion box!I used it.
Viktoria.

,

[Dyingout]

My Father. Had done 8 years in the army up to 1935, so was still in the reserves. So his call up was 5th September 1939.
After his initial three weeks retrain he came back and married my Mother by special licence on the 4th of October. Two days later he was gone back to the army. Apart from Christmas 1939 on a 72 hour pass, (Possibly compassionate leave as he was so newly married)  that was the last she saw of him. Until November 1940, when he had one month leave.
He was then posted along with my mother to Scotland. thence onto Northern Ireland. My mother came home from Ireland as she was pregnant with my older brother.
My Father came home from Dunkirk on a fishing trawler to Ramsgate. Like many he never talked about it.
Then one weekend (My Father was a Dunkirk Veteran very involved in their lodge) we were in Ostend for the Dunkirk Memorial weekend. Late one night five vets including my Father and myself were at a late night bar imbibing Bier and Brandy. And the stories started, I sat there totally dumbfounded at what these guys really went through. I thought no way is my father going to follow in his story, but to my amzement he did.
Only to find that he was a mile from Paradis (the site of the massacre of the Warwickshires) and only escaped death on the beaches by millimetres.
Laying in the dunes being strafed by Stukas and Messerschmitts when they had passed, he got up, his two comrades either side of him didn't. not once but twice this happened.
Even when he came home on leave in November 40 my mother said he was a nervous wreck still then.
After that weekend in Ostend my father did start to open up about his army career we had talked about his early years and got all his India, Egypt and Palestine stories.
We were about to get onto WW11. But he was diagnosed with cancer and passed soon after.
His army papers were ordered before the lockdown but all hope of getting them this year have gone. hopefully once here I can piece together his WW11 story.
 

[Viktoria]

It will be an epic account of  immense heroism and fortitude ,by people we would term” ordinary chaps” in other times.
The fact that they did not speak much about it all says a lot about it all.
Whatever comes in the post ,you can not but be proud .
I truly wished that girl had been confronted by a veteran, but believe me I gave her something to think about  and I hope she was ashamed of her attitude.
Such epic times we have seen, born 1937 I was too young to really appreciate Dunkirk, no cinemas where I lived and probably did not quite understand it all in the one newspaper a week.
I did later when older .

Just think ,I and many many others ,have been neighbours of,worked with and chatted to men who played a part in one of the most extraordinary events in our country’s history,without knowing it .
So modest have those men been.
Thanks for telling us your Dad’s part in it all .
Viktoria.

[ElRow]

Thank you all. Those stories are fascinating! I'm so glad I asked the question.

It's very strange that even though I have several of my father's war documents with his number quite clearly written and his rank and his unusual name, I still cannot find him on any of the sites which are supposed to help us.

Very strange
Eleri