大象传媒

Raphael Cohen was the child of immigrants from Palestine. He was my uncle, my maternal grandparents' youngest child. He was very athletic as a schoolboy and as a young adult adept at most sports in which he won many madals and cups - I recall seeing awards for tug-o'-war rugby and swimming displayed in my grandparents' living room.

He was a sergeant in the King's Royal Rifles and part of the British Expeditionary Force. He was detached from his unit in the race to the coast and took charge of a group of men from a variety of units also displaced. They commandeered a truck and made for Dunkirk. At one point they were dive bombed and the truck was destroyed. They finally made it to the beaches.

Raphael who was a very strong swimmer many times dived back into the water from the boat that initially evacuated him and swam back to the beaches to "swim" the wounded from the beaches to boats and ships waiting to evacuate them off shore, refusing to be evacuated himself.

Raphael was subsequently sent to Malta where as a result of the constant German bombing he suffered post traumatic stress and a break down from which he never fully recovered. At first he was listed as missing presumed dead. However family persistence payed off and he was found in a hospital in Egypt many months later. He died in his seventies, a quiet gentle man.

He recounted his swimmer role at Dunkirk many many years later to my younger brother.

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