Hero who escaped Dunkirk on a shed door dies at 101
A VETERAN who escaped Dunkirk by paddling out to sea on a shed door has died at the age of 101.
Les Rutherford became trapped at the French port while fighting a rear-guard action against the Nazis.
He and a comrade used the door – which had been blown off a shed – to escape out to sea where they were picked up by a trawlerman.
Mr Rutherford later switched to the RAF and eventually ended up in the ‘Great Escape’ prisoner of war camp, arriving before the mass break-out in March 1944.
Tributes paid yesterday described him as a ‘wonderful, kind, funny and modest man’.
In an interview to mark his 100th birthday last year, Mr Rutherford described how he joined the Army aged 20. He was a despatch rider in the 51st Highland Division, whose soldiers protected those trying to escape Dunkirk.
He said: ‘The place was being bombed to bits. We fought our way through as best we could, but eventually the whole division was trapped. Another chap and myself decided we didn’t like the idea of being prisoners so we got a large door which had been blown off a shed and put out to sea on it.’
He was picked up and returned to England wearing only a blanket and socks. Mr Rutherford later joined RAF Bomber Command and cheated death again when the nose of his Lancaster bomber was blown off by a German fighter over Frankfurt in December 1943.
He parachuted to safety but was captured and sent to Stalag Luft III – an officers’ camp 100 miles from Berlin later made famous in the 1963 film The Great Escape. Whilst there, he used to record life in the camp in a notebook and once drew a prisoner tunnelling under a prison guard.
In January 1945, the Germans force-marched Mr Rutherford and his fellow prisoners to a camp 30 miles south of Berlin as the
Russians advanced. The Russians handed them to the Americans and Mr Rutherford was finally repatriated in June 1945.
Once asked to reflect on his wartime service, Mr Rutherford, from North Hykeham, Lincolnshire, said: ‘It took up six years of my life – but they were six very important years.’ A spokesman for the International Bomber Command Centre in Lincoln, said: ‘If ever a man served his country to the highest standards it was Les.’
Mr Rutherford gave the centre the publishing rights of his book, My War, to help raise funds to build the centre.
‘We didn’t fancy being prisoners’