At Dunkirk, I was told it’s every man for himself

SID SPALDING, 100 from colchester, Essex

WHEN Sid Spalding got to Dunkirk in the final days of May 1940, he was told by his commanding officer: ‘It’s a case of every man for himself.’ ‘I thought that was a bit odd, but from that moment, I really was on my own.’

An electrician with the Royal Army Service Corps, attached to the 115th Field Regiment Royal Artillery, Sid spent the next 24 hours hiding in sand dunes under almost constant strafing from the Luftwaffe.

‘We weren’t in a position to be frightened. A lot of men had been soaked up to their chests in seawater while the aircraft strafed them and they were shivering with cold, not fear.’

Sid lay low during daylight, then made his way under the cover of darkness to a concrete pier. ‘I was looking down into the sea and, suddenly, a voice said up at me: “Tommy.”

‘There was a little boat down there, which had come all the way from England. It took me four miles out to sea and then I had to jump into a bigger barge. I landed on a big pile of rope. Down in the hold, it was full of British troops.’

After just a week of leave, Sid spent the next four years of war in the Egyptian desert, filling letters to his wife, whom he’d married just days before call-up in 1939, with little pictures lovingly drawn in Indian ink.

Reunited after the war, they had two children and Sid became a projectionist at the Empire cinema in Colchester.

At 100, he leads an independent life, and does his own shopping and laundry. ‘I’ve kept active all my life,’ he says. ‘It must help you live longer, mustn’t it?’