Done right

I owe a great debt to Hugh Sebag-montefiore (Perspective, 2 August). His book Dunkirk: Fight to the Last Man describes the battle in Boulogne Harbour on 23 May 1940, when seven destroyers evacuated 20th Guards Brigade and supporting troops. My father was mortally wounded by a sniper while on the bridge of HMS Vimy, and the book describes the event in the words of a young sailor who had already survived the sinking of the Battleship Royal Oak. Sebag-montefiore’s point about the apparent normality of life in England, in spite of the battle raging across the Channel, is confirmed by the fact that my grandparents were able to get a sleeper from Stirling to London and continue to Dover in order to attend my father’s burial at sea.

Like Sebag-montefiore I have reservations about the film Dunkirk. Either through poetic licence or dramatic requirements virtually every warship is sunk, and little evacuation appears to have taken place until the Little Ships arrive. While they did a superb job and brought troops back to the UK, their primary task was to pick up the men from the beaches and transfer them to the destroyers which carried out the bulk of the evacuation, initially from the mole by day, and later by night to evade the Luftwaffe. One of the destroyers was HMS Venomous, which made five trips to Dunkirk. bringing home 4,400 troops and two generals. General Alexander turned in on the Captain’s bunk and tore the coverlet with his spurs.

One 97-year-old former Green Howard, who had been rescued by Venomous on the night of 2-3 June, was read an extract about it. He exclaimed “It’s taken 77 years – that’s the first time anybody’s got it right!”

FRANK DONALD Tantallon Place, Edinburgh