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My story belongs to my grandparents. My grandmother Jeanne Michez had married Staff Sgt. Gordon Stanley in February – the first French girl to wed a member of the BEF. When the Germans invaded she went to her mother’s home in Servins (Pas-De-Calais). Suddenly, one afternoon Gordon appeared with a staff car. The Germans were coming, he told her. Jeanne flung a few things into a suitcase. In an hour she was ready. Typically French, she was dressed in a blue dress, blue coat and matching blue broad-brimmed hat. Off they went in the car accompanied by a corporal. The first night was spent in the car, others in ditches. Once they slept in the barn of a Belgian farmer, he wouldn’t give them permission so Gordon shot off the barn door lock. They got dirtier and dirtier. On one occasion Jeanne bought a bucket of water for ten francs, but mostly there was no time to wash.

At the small French town of Bailleul they received hospitality from an elderly spinster Mlle. Jonkerick, who, unlike many others they met welcomed them to her house. The journey was starting to take its toll on Jeanne, exhausted and with her once smart clothes in shreds, she told Gordon that she could not go on. The decision to leave my grandmother was tough but Jeanne convinced Gordon to go, he promised to return.

Gordon made it to Dunkirk, but his troubles were far from over. The first boat he got on was hit and capsized, leaving him to swim back to shore. The second boat met the same fate, leaving him once again swimming for the shore. The third boat eventually took him home.

He’d promised to return for my grandmother in two months, it took him five years.

My grandfather Maj G A Stanley died in 1976, my grandmother is very much alive and lives in Rainham in Kent.

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