Someone said ‘he’s dead, leave him’, so he yelled ‘I’m alive... help’
THE few youngsters playing on the near-deserted beach at Dunkirk didn’t give a second glance to the old man walking unsteadily across the sand.
Stanley Elliss, 97, didn’t notice them either as he stared along the long sweep of coast and into the Channel.
He was trying to visualise the scene 79 years ago when a third of a million demoralised Allied troops forced back to the beaches by the Germans, waited to be evacuated by a hastily-assembled fleet of vessels including hundreds of privately owned boats.
Stanley was thinking of older brother Len, then a 23-year-old Territorial
Army soldier, who got safely to a boat, only to be thrown in the water when it was torpedoed.
“Len was floating on a piece of wood when another boat came past,” says Stanley. “He heard someone say ‘Leave him, he’s dead’, but Len shouted out ‘I’m alive – come and help me!’. Thankfully they did and he got home safely.
“But it must have been terrible,” he adds quietly. “Our backs were really against the wall then.”
The Miracle of the Little Ships, in May-June 1940, could not hide the scale of what Churchill called “a colossal military disaster”. But it prompted that famous speech in which
he vowed British troops would return to France to “fight on the beaches” and never surrender. And four years later Sgt Stanley Elliss was one of those who landed on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day.
The RAF Commando had the task of preparing airstrips for Allied aircraft to land – and was almost torpedoed himself when the ship in front, carrying all his equipment, was sunk. Stanley, who was awarded the Legion d’honneur by France, is one of 255 D-Day veterans aged 91 to 101 on a Royal British Legion cruise to Normandy marking the 75th anniversary.
The modest hero, of Ashford, Kent, took the opportunity of a stopover in Dunkirk to visit the beach where Len, who died at 91, was saved.
Some veterans went to the town’s war memorial and got a warm welcome from locals in bars and cafes.
Others stayed on the ship, gazing out at the peaceful Dunkirk coastline or enjoying pints of Spitfire ale.
Today they will travel to Poole, Dorset, for an air and naval display.
Tomorrow they will take part in the official commemoration service attended by the Queen and President Trump in Portsmouth, Hants. And on Thursday they will mark the actual anniversary in Bayeux and Arromanches.