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On 27 May I found myself on board a Norfolkline ferry bound for Dunkirk. Not so unusual you might think until you checked out some very special passengers, old men now with service caps and berets, medals catching the morning sun, crossing to France to remember their part in the desperate days of May 1940 when somehow 340,000 members of the British Expeditionary Force were evacuated from under the noses of the advancing German army.

Norfolkline had ‘donated’ the boat for the day and organised various commemorative events on both sides of the Channel; ceremonies involving the veterans themselves and their families, civic dignitaries and politicians, representatives of the Church, choirs of English and French schoolchildren, members of the Royal Choral Society, the Parachute Regimental Band and a band of re-enactors dressed as servicemen of the time, so accurately uniformed as to look like ghosts.

The English children’s choir learning about Dunkirk with the help of two re-enactors dressed as infantrymen

During the crossing the old soldiers, sailors and airmen were the focus of intensive media attention and told their harrowing or inspiring stories (usually both) to a succession of attentive young journalists. Mid-Channel a Hurricane and Spitfire performed a fly-over, the Spit concluding with a victory roll; inspiring stuff that raised a cheer.

Two of the veterans who boarded at Dover

Docked in Dunkirk we gathered at the rail to watch The Little Ships sail past on their way to the inner harbour, the pleasure craft that with the Royal Navy warships were key to the survival of the British army. The Last Post played by a Para bugler was followed by a minute’s silence broken only by the beep of fork-lift trucks unloading nearby container ships and the rumble of distant marine engines.

the ceremony taking place at Dunkirk

Coincidentally I am mid-way through a chapter of my latest novel that involves a character in the events of May 1940 so the chance to talk face-to-face with some of the men who were there was invaluable. But I was invited as a journalist incidentally, not a novelist, as OLDIE magazine had asked me to submit an article on the trip…