The man in my story is my great-grandmother's second husband, so although he is not technically my great-grandfather, that is what we call him.

He died when I was quite young, but my family are always telling me wonderful stories about what an amazing and funny man he was. At the time of World War II, he and my great-grandmother lived in London. When the war broke out, he went to fight on the continent, and he witnessed many horrible things that I have heard about over the years. However, unlike many others during the evacuation of the British Army at Dunkirk, he survived and was on one of the very last small boats to leave.

Many years later, when my grandma had moved up north to Yorkshire, where her parents eventually lived, they came to visit her and went to a local pub. While they were there, my great-grandfather noticed that the name of the boat he had been evacuated on was hung on the wall. Thinking it was just a coincidence of the same name, he asked the man behind the bar about it. The man answered that he had been in charge of that boat during the evacuation. It had not had many men on it and had been one of the very last to leave the Dunkirk beaches.

Sian Thomas