大象传媒

Melville Thomas,my dear husband,died suddenly of a heart attack on Saturday 7th May 1994, aged 74 only three weeks after a twelve year task writing memoirs of his five years as a POW.
Mel was the Gwent County Drama Advisor for 25 years,founding the Gwent Young Peoples' Theatre and a successful professional adult Gwent Theatre in Education.
This successful man's ready smile hid many bad memories of his war time experience. An army doctor advised him to write about them.

25th May to 30th May 1940
The British Expeditionary Force in France was made up of skilled and experienced men who would be needed for the training and reconstruction of a new Army for future defence and the defeat of Nazism.
Forced to retreat to the channel by the German breakthrough in Sedan,225,000 British and 110,000 French soldiers were evacuated from Dunkirk between the 27th May and June 2nd. Not one soldier was left on the beach. If you got to Dunkirk alive and could stay alive, you got home. Ships of the Royal Navy and requisitioned civilian vessels, as well as countless small boats from every part of our country ( all under sustained attack from the air ) saw to that. 30,000 British did not make it; they were either killed, wounded or captured.
There was a circle of bastions surrounding the area of Dunkirk where men were required to hold the Germans back so that the escape of the Army could be made. One of these bastions was Cassel.
Cassel is a town of charm and ancient dignity
resting mainly on the larger of two hills overlooking the kindly farmlands and villages of Picardy. It is twenty miles inland from Dunkirk.

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