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My father, Richard Cobbledick, was a farm worker in Devon in 1939 and at age 18 volunteered for service in the RAF at the outbreak of war. Shortly after his initial training, and still aged 18, he was sent to France in a forward observation post at Amiens.

The general retreat back to Dunkirk was in full progress, and he clearly remembers the Germans arriving on one side of the town as he and his group retreated, on foot, at the other side.

By good fortune, he hitched a lift on a retreating French gun carriage, but by then it was too late to be evacuated from the beach at Dunkirk, and he finally joined a group of other stranded British servicemen who managed to keep one step ahead of the Germans.

After a week of walking around the coastal ports of northern France the group found a fishing boat willing to take them back to England.

Quite an adventure for a young farm worker from Devon, and a never-to-be-forgotten 19th birthday on the 4th June 1940.

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