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This is Eric Cottam's account of Dunkirk:

'I joined up on 9 August 1938 simply because I was drifting from one factory job to another — I was bored of that. I followed my friend Len, who came from an army family; it was natural for them to join the army soon as they turned 18. I had a few problems getting into the army - it took me three times. I was born with an underdeveloped pectoral muscle. They didn't like that little flaw in the army recruiting office. Anyway, I tried again because initially I thought they'd failed me on an injured hand. I'd had an accident working on a milling machine - nearly sawed off all my fingers, and there's a bad scar now. But that wasn't the problem; it was the underdeveloped chest muscle.

After I'd tried to join up twice in James Street, Birmingham, Len had a brilliant idea when he came home on his first leave — he told me to try the barracks. So I cycled over to Bulford Barracks. I thought that terms of entry would be a lot stricter, with all the dress uniforms and the recruiting signs, but I got through. I eventually followed Len, but whereas I went to France with the 2nd Battalion, he went to India with the 1st Battalion. I should have gone with him because I wouldn't have been injured.

Bulford Barracks and bren gun carriers

I joined 2nd Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment, 6th of foot - one of the oldest regiments. I enjoyed my time training in Bulford - six months - then we were sent down to Aldershot, the Mecca of the British Army in those days. I was in D company for a while and then I was transferred to MT platoon. I wanted to be a driver.

The battalion was allocated ten bren gun carriers. All infantry regiments wanted drivers for the carriers and, since I fancied a pair of carrier driver's goggles, I joined the carrier platoon. We were a very happy crowd and we had great fun before the war, driving across country and through woods — yes, I enjoyed that. We all more or less drifted into the army. Even though war was looming, it didn't seem to worry us. We considered ourselves immortal - as most young people do.

War declared

We were surprised when we were taken off manoeuvres and confined to barracks, awaiting orders, but we still thought it would be over by Christmas — we thought, it'll be great fun, let's get there. We were meant to be shipped out from Southampton to Cherbourg, but we had to travel all the way to Newport in Wales because that was the only dock where we could unload heavy military vehicles. We joined the battalion at Limones, before we went north to the Belgian frontier.

I liked France because there was no competition for the girls - the French were busy elsewhere! And I liked the cafes, although we didn't have much money so we couldn't afford to go out. This was the phoney war period — then, over the winter, it became serious. The Allies were hoping to extend the Maginot to the coast. My battalion was involved, building tank tracks and constructing pillboxes. That was hard work, especially in bad weather. I was glad when the spring came, but, of course, that was when the trouble really started.

´óÏó´«Ã½ was wasted. The Germans simply bypassed all the tank traps, which was very unsporting of them after all the time we'd taken to develop them. I think they also more or less bypassed the Maginot Line when they came through the Ardennes, which was meant to be impassable. Hitler surrounded us and the retreat started. We were lured into Belgium and then the Germans closed the trap. We had to get out. The Belgians packed up and the French on the right collapsed — it was chaos.

The retreat

I didn't know where I was half the time. Things were made worse by lack of sleep and lack of food. The cook house shop was blown up so we had make do, living off the land. We used to scrounge at farms, deserted farms, for chickens and things like that, and we went into houses to find food, even butter that had gone off and stale bread. We had to boil the water because of the threat of disease, but sometimes we found coffee, which was a great.

This war wasn't the one I'd imagined. I had pictures of an entire command with trucks, troops, vehicles, tanks and so on. We couldn't see a thing in the streets so we didn't know what was going on. We didn't have radio, or anything like that. We were isolated from the battalion, so we were on our own, obeying orders to go here, there and everywhere. We had to do a lot of travelling at night, keeping our heads during the day and travelling at night.

Then there were the refugees - we couldn't go forward because they were crowding the road. They didn't seem to know where they were going. They were disorientated because the front line was so fluid (modern warfare had come as a surprise to a lot of people). I felt sorry for them because they had been so cheerful when we arrived. Our carrier had broken down on the outskirts of Brussels - radiator trouble - and they were very helpful. They gave us water and provided us with baguettes and cheese, even a bottle of wine. But when we were coming back, they had a different attitude - one old lady in a crowd leaned over the cab and spat at me because she thought we were running away. I felt, especially sorry for the children. Half of them were asleep and they were all overdressed so they could carry their clothes. It was boiling hot. People had bicycles, also overloaded, and wheelbarrows. There were very few cars but the refugees created problems — it was very difficult to get through the crowds.

A Fifth Columnist

A crowd of people gathered around the carrier and in the centre of this crowd there was a small chap in a brand new British uniform with no shoulder tabs, no markings or anything. The crowd was very agitated. They dragged us towards this chap and they wanted us to identify him - was he a British soldier or a fifth columnist? So we asked him the usual questions in English: name, number, rank, but he didn't respond. He didn't know any English, but apparently he knew no French or German either. The crowd suspected he was a fifth columnist, a spy dressed in army uniform, but we couldn't get any sense out of him. They dragged him away and I thought, well that's going to be the end of him. I was waiting for the sound of revolver shots… but I don't know what happened to him.

We were so tired and hungry that we didn't give things too much thought. I more or less become a robot — I didn't think a lot because I didn't have the time to think. Sometimes, when the shelling stopped, I'd have a moment to think, well this is a nice place to spend a holiday, or I'd think bit more deeply about things, but I couldn't do anything about it.

Injured at Hollain

We put the carriers facing the road to look across to the Escaut Canal about three hundred yards away. We'd found an open space between two buildings. The idea was to put over a field of crossfire if they came over the canal, which they did eventually because the canal was very low and provided no defence barrier at all. They called it the Battle of the Escort, but really there was no escort because the water was so low. The shelling started, not only forwards - they were shelling us from behind - and it got very bad. The officer ordered us into the house behind us, which had a cellar. There was a spotter plane overhead, which we thought was ours but it wasn't - it had been captured and was used as a spotting plane and it dogged our battalion all through the retreat. Anyway, the ceiling light in the cellar was shaking and the plaster was falling down, so I said to the officer — this was the only time I'd shouted at an officer — 'I think we ought to get out of here, sir, before the building falls down on us.' He deliberated for a while - he was a new officer who had taken over from Lieutenant Allen when Allen was promoted to captain and went back to G Company - then he said, 'I think you're right, Cottam.' Thank you! We got out and looked through the dust. All the other buildings were rubble - all the windows in our building were blown out. We were very lucky — we could have been buried alive.

Then the barrage lifted, so we ran to our carriers and as we did so we saw figures, three hundred yards away across the canal. They laid down a barrage of small trench mortars, equal to our two-inch trench mortars - nasty little things. We knew we couldn't get into the carriers with those things because if we did we wouldn't last very long - if at all. So we decided to get on the ground and wait until the barrage lifted. Before we could do that, I dived in front of my carrier and landed by the left-hand track. Then I saw a mine - I saw the last six feet of a mine come down with my number on it. It exploded about twelve inches to my left-hand side. It was only a small thing so it didn't go BANG or BOOM - it just went 'snap', very quiet really. Most of the explosion went over me, taking the track off my carrier and wrapping it over the top of the cab like silk ribbon. The explosion also took my left foot and boot against the carrier side.

Left foot gone

I sat up when the barrage stopped. My left foot had gone with my boot on it. There was blood everywhere. My face was a mess, and I thought my eye had gone. That's the first thing I thought - my eye's gone. That's the worst injury. I put my right hand over my right eye and I found I could still see out of the left, so that was a relief. It turned out there were slithers of shrapnel in my face. My right leg was also a mess, bloody and shattered, but the foot was still there. Then I realised that the knee joint was turned completely round, which was serious.

Two lads came over to me. 'Are you alright, Kush?' they asked (they used to call me 'Kush' because I was so easy going). They had minor injuries relative to mine, and they were able to pull out their field dressings and wrap me up. I sat there for a while. I couldn't do anything else. That's when I started to think too much.

Some time after that, a 1,500-weight truck rolled up — out of nowhere it seemed. I was placed on this truck and taken to a temporary casualty clearing station. The shelling started again as a doctor gave me a blood transfusion and wrapped me up. I was only wearing my shirt and shorts - very indecent - and I ended up wrapped in bandages. I looked like a mummy. The doctor also put a blood transfusion tube in my wrist. I've still got the mark. I trapped a nerve. The doctor had to cut the cat gut there and he left the frayed ends in and by the time I got back to England six days later that had turned sceptic. There was also shrapnel in my elbow - it's still there apparently.

Getting back

I travelled on a hospital train, which was a bit hairy. Then I was on another truck, then another hospital train. They put me in a top bunk and the doctor there gave me a morphine injection. The chap below me must have been in terrible pain, unlike me, which was odd. Each time he was given a morphine injection, I got one too. I was very thirsty, although I didn't realise why - I was losing a lot of blood.

The doctor eventually made an announcement. He stood in the gangway and turned his head first one way and then the other. He said, 'I'm afraid there's no more morphine left.' Then he came to my side, tied a tag on my shirt and said, 'You'll pull through, old chap.' I thought that was very nice of him because I was feeling a bit low.

We pulled into a station and at the end of the platform I saw lots of stretchers neatly piled up with a blanket over them — obviously the dead had been left there for the Germans to pick up. I thought, I don't want to be in that lot. I had to keep yelling to make sure that people knew I was alive.

We came to Calais, which was being shelled. It was a very dark night, but with the bright lights of the shelling I could see a ship in front of me. They carried me aboard on my trusty stretcher, which I'd been on for five days, and they put me on the ship.

That's when I heard an officer say, 'I don't think we can get out of here. If we go anywhere it'll be Norway. I think the only way out would be the road to Dunkirk, if that road is still open.

Hospital treatment

I passed out then I woke up in hospital. Nobody told me the extent of my injuries. I had a conscious moment when a padre poked his head through the screened-off corner of the room. I realise why he only poked his head round - because I had gangrenous wounds and the stench must have been powerful. He wasn't going to come any nearer. He asked me a few questions and that was that. I thought he was a bit severe.

I had a cage over the bed with a linen screen in front of the cage. I thought it was because of the wounds on my legs. It was after nursing sisters came round to change dressings that I realised what had happened. They lifted the bedclothes onto the cage so they could see to my dressings. The screen was tied with a bow at the end of the bedrail, and this had come undone, so I thought I should tie it up, but I'd just have a look at my legs out of curiosity. I pulled the thing up and looked - all I could see was a white sheet. So I realised what they'd done. They often went away whispering, and I always thought that was their kind way letting me find out for myself because they didn't know how to put it into words.

I've heard of occasions when people have had a leg off and the surgeon has been very sympathetic, but that didn't happen to me; I had to find out for myself. You have to relate it to the times. Terrible things were happening. I never felt bitter in me life. If I'd have been bitter I wouldn't have lasted until I was 83. Anyway, I found love, didn't I? You didn't have a chance in hospitals — they'd just tell you, 'You're off tomorrow - somewhere else.' You couldn't tell any of your relatives. Anyway, they put me in an ambulance on a January morning and they sent me to Leeds where they had a limb-fitting and re-amputation centre, just like Roehampton. It was Dot — my wife-to-be — who booked me in to ward two and I think she said to the others, 'He's mine!''

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