It is fascinating how the use of language can contribute to prevailing myths. This was illustrated in Peter Ricketts’s article (Observations, 17 July) on the summer of 1940, when German troops invaded France and “British troops were rescued from Dunkirk”. Films, books and articles sustain this interpretation of history, but more than 30,000 British soldiers did not make it back to Britain – they were in fact captured by Nazi forces and taken to prison camps in Poland. When Charles de Gaulle made his speech on 18 June 1940, my father was in a hospital wing of a prison camp in Torun, Poland, after being captured near Lille on 29 May. He spent the next five years as a prisoner, before being marched back into Germany in the winter of 1945 and finally liberated by American forces in April, the day after his 26th birthday. The belief that the Dunkirk evacuation was a victory no doubt contributes to the prevailing myth of British exceptionalism.
Dr Mike Davis
Blackpool
Peter Ricketts seeks to undermine the idea of “Britain standing alone in 1940” (Observations, 17 July). He refers to the work of David Edgerton and others who showed that “Britain was never entirely alone” and to the airmen of parts of the British empire who served in the RAF.
Content from our partners
