I remember boats like her.. men all over, on the decks, on the roof as the bombs rained down – TED OATES, DUNKIRK VETERAN
Sailing gently along the Thames under tranquil skies, Dunkirk veteran Ted Oates relaxes on deck. It is a far cry from the first time he found himself on one of these Little Ships escaping from the fearsome German war machine...
Nazi planes overhead raining down death, cold Channel surf to his waist, and feelings he usually prefers to keep at bay. “I have dreamed about it,” he says.
It has been a week of remembering and reunions for Ted.
The release yesterday of director Christopher Nolan’s movie about the Second World War evacuation has brought back memories of the chaos and fear on the French shores Ted escaped as a 20-year-old sergeant.
The film’s premiere led to him meeting other veterans of the 1940 evacuation. Then there is the get-together with a different sort of veteran... the Riis 1, or White Heather as she was called then.
She is one of the Dunkirk Little Ships – the roughly 700 civilian vessels, including fishing boats and pleasure steamers, that helped the Royal Navy rescue nearly 340,000 stranded Allied troops over those exhausting days from May 26 to June 4. Ted, now 97, and Riis 1 witnessed hell on earth together.
This unassuming pleasure yacht, then a wealthy family’s plaything commandeered by the Navy, rescued upwards of 200 troops from those battered beaches, their bodies – some fatally injured – sprawled across her.
Ted made his escape on another member of the plucky Little Ship armada, a now-lost ration boat filled with canned fruit and cigarettes.
Pointing to Riis’s stern, Ted – just two months older than the vessel – says: “We’ve both been through the mill. I remember seeing boats like her there.
“There would have been men all over her, on the decks, on the roof, inside.
“Boats were being bombed. I remember seeing a bomb fall down the funnel of a destroyer.
“It could not be more different today,” he adds, suddenly snatching himself from his reverie.
We sail serenely past idyllic meadows, a universe away from that chaotic Channel crossing 77 years ago, but Ted’s memories continue to be thrown into sharp relief. Recalling his escape, he explains he trekked for days to Dunkirk. When he got there, he offered his help as a stretcher bearer. “I only got on this ration boat because I had taken a man on a stretcher on to a hospital ship and they told me to get off via this one.
“I just stepped down on to it,” he says, staring across the water.
“There were tins of pineapple, piles of boxes of cigarettes.
“I was stuck in the corner of the open hold, on the floor with my back to iron girders. My trousers and boots were soaking wet. We had waded out to sea but couldn’t get on any of the boats, they were all full. It was chaos. I recall a destroyer sending out a rowing boat with a couple of sailors which sank because so many tried to get on board.
“The man next to me yelled for ammo to fire up at the Germans and somehow I had some, in my soaking jacket pocket. It was boiling hot as I’d spread my jacket on the boat’s boiler to dry. He took them anyway and fired into the air – bu didn’t hit one. Do you know how ha is to hit an aircraft?”
He adds: “I hadn’t eaten for days opened a tin of peaches but I was im diately sick. Then I went to sleep.”
Finally, like the troops try to do in main photo – a black and white im colourised to mark the release of the – he had got on to one of the boats.
Beside him on Riis 1 today, ano veteran here for the trip, George Pur 98, becomes increasingly quiet. His s daughter, Louise Hamer, says he w silent too as he watched the premie Hollywood film Dunkirk, alongside
Starring Mark Rylance, Kenn Branagh, Tom Hardy and H Styles, there were names apl there to warrant applause – it was rightly given to the handfu remaining veterans. It is echoed today by visitors lin the river for the Thames Traditi Boat Festival in HenleyThames, Oxon, where Riis 1 a flotilla of surviving Little Sh have gathered. George, fr Reading, Berks, who served w the Royal Army Service Corps,