大象传媒

My father, Tony Baldwin, joined the army in 1937 to fight fascism He was a subaltern aged 25 in the British Expeditionary Force, living it up in a French chateau during the Phoney War 1939-40. Luckily he was in a transport company in the RASC, with vehicles and fuel available so when the retreat was ordered his journey to Dunkirk was not too difficult. He told me there was one particularly terrifying moment though, when he saw three German tanks come over a rise towards him; but suddenly they turned West, heading for Paris. Later on, after standing in water up to his neck for ages with his commanding officer and the rest of his unit waiting to get on a boat, he just decided he'd had enough of it and went back to the beach; there he met an army friend he had trained with who took him along to a pier and got him onto a boat. He came home safely to his wife who was pregnant with his first child, my brother; his commanding officer and other members of his unit did finally get on another boat, but it was bombed and sank. After Dunkirk every day of my father's life was a bonus - he lived it to the full, to the age of 87 - and I was lucky to be born (in 1943).

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