Their own Dunkirk

SIR – I was interested to read your report (July 8) on the film Dunkirk, but wonder if anyone has ever researched the alternative methods soldiers used to find their way home.

As a child growing up in the Fifties, I was often told how an uncle – at the time a 19-year-old conscript – had been with a group of soldiers who “stole a lorry”, drove to Brest and crossed the Channel in a French fishing boat.

The son of our local greengrocer in north London was always said to have “found” a small boat and, with a colleague, rowed home to England. Penny Clive

Swanmore, Hampshire