D for miles as s but we never was a miracle

The rescue that turned into his own

First George shook hands, and Charlotte was at first a bit shy but then shook my hand, too.”

Whether you are a Hollywood director or a future king, shaking his hand is a privilege. The veteran, from Mortlake, South West London, was working in dispatches in Harrods when he was recruited.

He joined the RAF but a wireless operator was what the Army needed in France so he was seconded to 13th Lysander Squadron at Arras, and dispatched to the Royal Signals.

Arthur had been there four months when the order was made to gather the troops at Dunkirk for the evacuation.

He shows me his diary, in which he describes entering the town on May 29 at 10am. “We could see the town was being bombed and shelled into ruins,” he writes. “Black smoke appeared to be coming from the docks area and streets were littered with bodies, but no one had the time to remove them. We moved to the beach area and joined the longest queue I’ve ever seen and commenced to wait our turn to get on a boat of any sort…”

He recalls not having drunk for days after the Nazis had bombed the water works.

“A lady in a cafe said all she could give me was vin rouge, so she filled my flask up for free. That’s all I had, for 29 hours,” he laughs.

He waited through the night. The Nazis were dropping leaflets from the smoke-filled skies, saying: “Your troops are entirely surrounded – stop fighting!” But Arthur refused to give up hope, and finally reached the front of the line.

He was allowed to board a fishing trawler, commandeered by the Navy, called the Lord Grey. “I collapsed into

TDISPATCH rider Garth

Wright took one look at the men queuing on the beaches and decided he was not getting out of Dunkirk alive.

As bombs and machine gun fire rained down, the 20-year-old, from Tavistock, Devon, dug a trench in the sand dunes.

Garth, 97, of Plymouth, recalls: “I thought I’d die there. It was hell on earth. It was despair really.”

He decided if he was to die, he might as well help.

“They needed stretcher bearers. I was directed to a lad who was dying. With another man, we picked our way along the mole.”

When Garth reached the destroyer HMS Codrington, he put down the stretcher and was about to leave when the captain insisted he stay.

He served until May 1946 and two years ago sailed across the Channel in a Little Ship, “Not for myself, but for all the chaps I was with.”

Attending the Dunkirk premiere on Thursday, he said: “The Dunkirk Spirit is there in that film.”

Garth is a British Legion beneficiary. For more information visit www. britishlegion.org.uk.

sleep,” he recalls. “I woke in the middle of the Channel and the water was as smooth as glass. We were saved.”

he Lord Grey disembarked at Dover, and Arthur was put on a train to RAF Uxbridge in London. The station warrant officer gave anyone who had been at Dunkirk permission to “lie in until 8am rather than get up at 6.30”.

Arthur continued to serve throughout the war, including in the Battle of Britain, and after he was demobbed he rejoined the RAF and served for 36 years. He and his wife Vera had six children, 13 grandchildren and 12 great grandchildren. Three grandsons joined the forces.

Above all his exploits, it is Dunkirk he “still thinks about every morning”. Mostly of others trying to get away.

“I think about them all the time, it never goes,” he says. “We couldn’t stop to help them. Like us, they were just trying to get out of Dunkirk.”

Dunkirk is out in cinemas on Friday.

HERO Garth with Sir Ken