I Fought at Dunkirk

The last survivors tell their stories of the Battle of Dunkirk.

This book tells the story of a handful of men who remember the time, more than seventy years ago when Germany swept through Europe. They took part in the first successful skirmishes against the formidable German army, and then held their own as enemy armoured columns sliced through neutral Holland and Belgium. But within a week they were retreating, angry, confused and disheartened. The French Army had collapsed, leaving the BEF exposed and vulnerable.

On the move for days, they became exhausted and hungry, low on ammunition, heading for their last stand at the beaches of Dunkirk. In shocked despair, they saw there the wreckage of a British army and waited for an uncertain rescue from the Royal Navy.

The veterans in this book saw action in the first battles on the front line, and fought in the last ditch defence of Dunkirk. They saw their comrades bombed and drowned off the beaches. Their individual accounts take the reader through every aspect of these young men's war in France, from confident idyllic days of the phoney war in the French countryside, to the sudden shock of battle, leading to the fear and confusion of retreat and the despair of Dunkirk.