Luck and initiative of the survivors at Dunkirk

SIR – On arriving at Dunkirk (Letters, July 15), my grandfather saw a mass of people awaiting evacuation, long lines of them stretching out to sea.

An impatient man, he saw a half-submerged rowing boat and persuaded a few men to help him get it afloat. They did, and managed to paddle out to a ship waiting in the Channel. He scrambled aboard and fell asleep very quickly.

He woke up in Dover harbour and asked someone the date. It was June 2 and his 21st birthday.

He died last year aged 96, a fighter to the end and a hero to us all. Lizzie Reynolds

Deal, Kent

SIR – I agree entirely with John Carey on the state of soldiers returning from Dunkirk. I remember standing by the railway line at Ashford as a small child and seeing these men with bloodstained, tattered bandages barely covering injuries. It is a childhood memory that haunts me to this day. Pauline Edwards

Harrow, Middlesex

SIR – My father used to recount how an officer fiercely challenged a bedraggled soldier in the street, here in Carmarthen: “Where’s your cap?”

All the lad said to send his superior fleeing with his tail between his legs was: “Dunkirk!” J Towyn Jones

Carmarthen

SIR – In your Dunkirk correspondence there’s been no mention of the French. Ninety thousand died in the Battle of France. Hardly “surrender monkeys”. Nicholas Bird

London W3