Free Not Flag or Fail by D.E. Kirk Page A

frantic activity. Not all of it seemed too well organised and in some instances officers had there pistols drawn pointing them at the men as they shouted out orders.
    We kept walking, not really encouraged to join the throngs on the beach, we passed posts that had been set up for some reason or other that wasn’t clear, they usually contained officers or NCOs and sometimes both but no one seemed interested in us so unchallenged we just kept walking.
    Eventually we came to a shelter that I suppose in happier times had been used by holiday makers to sit in and admire the sea views, now though, all of the windows had been blown out and parts of the roof were missing, but the bench inside was still serviceable so we went in sat down and got the fags out.
    We were about five or six hundred yards away from the sea and as we smoked our cigarettes we watched as the navy tried to organise the queues of soldiers into small boats some of which seemed to capsize as soon as they were loaded. Other boats appeared overloaded and were stuck on the bottom causing men to be off loaded again. Further out a destroyer was being strafed by ME 109’s, which in turn were being chased off by three of the RAF’s new Spitfire fighters.
    “This is flipping, organised, flipping, chaos this is!” said Fishy.
    “Yes and we’ll soon be part of it.” I said, lighting another cigarette from the butt of my previous one; we had gone a long time without a smoke. Jack blew a smoke ring and then almost sighing said “I could murder a cup of tea!”
    “Me too, why don’t we go and get one then?” Ronny Answered
    “That’s a good idea, where from?” I asked.
    “Well…” said Ronny, “we’ve done alright on our own so why don’t we take a stroll down the prom and find a little café. If we find a little boat instead, then we can see if our friend Fishface here really is the expert boatman he keeps telling us he is. We’ll see if he can get us back home any better than the Navy seems to be doing with that lot, and then we can have a proper cup of tea.
    “You’re not serious are you, isn’t that classed as desertion?” I asked.
    “Certainly not, didn’t our Lieutenant tell us it was every man for himself? Isn’t that what we are doing using our initiative?” replied Ronny
    “You just find me the boat” said Fishy “I’ll get us home, you flipping watch me!”
    We straightened up our uniforms as best we could, shouldered our rifles and then, with me leading and the others behind me marching in pairs as smartly as we could, we marched right down the seafront right out of Dunkirk. No-one stopped us, no one even challenged us. I think there must be something about soldiers marching that puts officer’s minds at ease. Soon we had left the British military behind, the problem now was, would we encounter any Germans? We didn’t want to risk it, so as soon as we felt it was safe to do so we took cover in the sand dunes.
    I suppose that technically we had deserted, although we only saw it as using our own initiative to get back home. We took the time to have some hardtack and water, then after organising the guard, we took turns in getting wrapped in our groundsheets, then in the comfort of the dunes and warmed by a sun that shone on both sides of this conflict with equal favour we took some well-earned sleep.
    It was mid-afternoon by the time we had all had an equal amount of sleep, I for one felt much better, Harry and Jack were up at the top of the dune, lying down, watching the dramas in the sky over the Dunkirk beaches. Looking back it seemed we were now about three miles away and were definitely out of the danger zone, we were also out of the rescue zone but somehow I think we all felt confident we could get out of this on our own.
    I went up to the top of the dune on the other side of the dip we had used to conceal us and took the time to take in the lay of the land. The sand dunes petered out about a mile further on and were replaced