‘At Dunkirk, screamed as dived at the

RUBBLE filled the streets and buildings lay in broken heaps by the time private Neville “Timber” Wood returned to the outskirts of Dunkirk on May, 30, 1940.

The grisly sight of hands and feet poking from under the debris was not the first glimpse of death for Neville, 19, who had spent the last eight weeks fighting the German advance on the front lines of the River Dyle andvimy Ridge.

Just a few days earlier he had watched silently as his favourite barmaid – “like something out of

‘Sand absorbed the explosion’

a dream: blonde, red pouting lips, her full figure emphasised by the low-cut white blouse and black pencil skirt” – was carried out dead from a café demolished by German Stuka dive bombers.

With Belgium and Holland already defeated, and French officials furiously burning documents ahead of the inevitable capture of Paris, the 390,000-strong British Expeditionary Force was now encircled by Hitler’s Panzers.

All that lay ahead was prayedfor rescue from Dunkirk’s beaches and humiliating retreat with, in Churchill’s words, “the whole root and core and brain of the British Army about to perish upon the field or to be led into an ignominious and starving captivity”.

Yorkshireman Timber’s account of Dunkirk, where he fought in the Royal Army Service Corps, is captured in his war journals, which cover his entire campaign.

He recalls that even as he and his brothers-in-arms marched towards the beach and longed-for salvation, the group was stopped by a Military Police sergeant.

“You men! What unit?” barked the sergeant.

“RASC, sir, 50 Div,” replied Timber.

“Good, you’re needed. Follow me.”

They were swiftly driving back to the Belgian border in six requisioned lorries to drop off Coldstream Guards ordered to hold back the German advance long enough to ensure the evacuation – which was to have taken two days but had already taken four – would leave no man behind.

They turned back just as the Guards’ Lewis guns burst to life to repel yet another German attack.

Ordered to destroy their lorries, Timber’s team faced a 15-mile march back to the coast, reaching