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I was with my mother in the sitting room of our house in Northampton on a sunny afternoon, helping to tidy her workbasket and recovering from whooping cough, when the front door burst open and there stood my cousin, John Perry (aged 23)saying "Hello Auntie".

His face was black and unshaven, his hands very dirty also. He had come straight from Dunkirk. I never knew what transport had got him across the sea but he said he had seen the ship with his kit - and men - completely blown up.

His trousers were torn and done up with tacking cotton and safety pins. From his pocket he produced a battered spoon and fork and a rifle slung over his shoulder he said he had picked up on the beach; no other possessions.

My mother rushed to telephone his parents in Wembley and also my father. She then went straight to a nearby baker (Lawrences in St. Giles Street) to get his favourite Chelsea Buns, leaving him with me, and reading "Punch".

It appeared, after reaching land, they were put on any train just to disperse them and when he enquired where this particular one was going and they said "Northampton", he could hardly believe it. (He was in the Northamptonshire Regiment). He walked from the Station, on his own, straight to our house. My father came home and immediately took him to Northampton Barracks to check in.

John spent the night with us wearing my father's pyjamas and sleeping almost through the next day.

He cleaned the gun on the kitchen table and then asked if he could fire it in the air in our garden to get rid of the sand - my mother saying an emphatic "No" and then she put a belt of cartridges in the Corner Cupboard for safe keeping.

He told us he had got separated from his men and spent the night/s in a dug-out on the beach. I never picked up any more but I just remember how stunned he seemed. Later, he rejoined his Regiment but because of his behaviour (I never knew details but insubordination was mentioned) was discharged from the Army but later diagnosed with Shell Shock.

He went to St. Andrews Hospital, Northampton, and later underwent a Leucotomy Operation there to try and relieve "blackouts" which were increasingly frequent. My uncle moved mountains to get him reinstated into the Army. Before that, he would not get up unless he could wear his uniform and he refused to see my father (who had been in the First World War)because he felt he had disgraced the family.

Eventually, he made apparent improvements and, in 1946, we went to see him at St. Andrews just before he was going to Wales to St. Andrews Holiday Resort, and then to be discharged to his own home, apparently cured. In Wales, however, he had one more "blackout" from which he never recovered.

Elizabeth Warren (nee Perry)

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