IT WAS a defining moment of the Second World War in which 200,000 British troops were rescued from certain death or capture after being defeated by the Germans in France.
And now, the amazing story has emerged of a Scottish soldier who escaped, was recaptured and narrowly avoided execution by the SS after the intervention of a regular German Army officer.
David Mowatt, from the Black Isle, was one of thousands of t
roops taken prisoner by the Germans in the northern French town of St Valery after they failed to make it to the Allied evacuation on the beaches of Dunkirk.
Mowatt's tale is to be told in a new book to be published next month called Dunkirk: The Men They Left Behind, by the leading historical writer Sean Longden.
Amid the euphoria over saving the troops from disaster, few focused on the thousands of soldiers left behind who had fought alongside the French Army and on the later evacuations of soldiers from other parts of the French coast.
In June 1940, the 51st Highland Division was surrounded at St Valery en Caux and forced to surrender.
For Mowatt, captivity came as a severe shock. Two years before the outbreak of the Second World War, he joined the local Territorial Army battalion in search of extra cash and a welcome break from his job as a farm labourer.
He said: "We thought we'd join the TA and get a holiday."
As part of the Fourth Battalion the Seaforth Highlanders, he was stationed in northern France, where he and colleagues would sneak out into no man's land looking for signs of whether the Germans were moving forward.
He lost a close friend in battle and his division was pushed back across France by the relentless German advance before the division was captured at St Valery. They had hoped to get to Le Havre, where another evacuation was under way. Mowatt himself personally encountered the Nazis' star commander, General Erwin Rommel.
Mowatt said: "Rommel came up, he was on one of the first tanks to come through. He spoke to us. He said: 'I hope you will be treated fairly and you will not be too long a prisoner of war.' He was right there at the front with his troops. He probably knew we'd had it. He knew he was safe."
Mowatt found that he was one of 40,000 British soldiers marched towards Germany with little food, water or rest. He completely wore out a brand-new pair of double-soled boots during the forced march to Dortmund.
Speaking of the horror of that march, he said: "I didn't have the strength to talk. We were all dragged right down. We were filthy – lousy. I can't describe the despair. It was terrible. The days just blurred into each other. We didn't know how far we were going to march – we were just going in circles."
He and his comrades endured brutality from German guards who shot soldiers who reached out for food which French peasants had put by the roadside for them. And then in the camps they had to endure more trauma from fellow British soldiers as officers and NCOs tried to impose discipline on the exhausted and demoralised prisoners.
Mowatt said: "I can't remember entering the camp. All I can remember was a Welsh Sergeant Major. He was trying to get us to march up and down – after all the way we'd walked! I collapsed and ended up in hospital.
"That sergeant eventually wangled his way on to a repatriation ship. On the boat on the way home he vanished. Someone got him and dumped him over the side. It was someone who remembered him from the camp, and thought, 'I'll have him one day!'"
Mowatt then spent almost five years in the Thorn PoW camp in occupied Poland until the chance came for freedom in 1945.
As the Red Army advanced through Poland and East Prussia, the Germans set about evacuating the camps and marching the prisoners west.
Mowatt and three others men managed to escape and headed east towards the advancing Soviet troops. They survived in the Polish countryside for two weeks by killing and eating farm animals. But they were then captured by the SS, who planned to shoot the fugitive PoWs. They were only saved when an ordinary German officer appeared and took the five men into his care.
He said: "One morning we woke up to the sound of tanks. We thought: 'Good God, we're at the front line.' By the time we got dressed all the doors had been smashed in. We were expecting it to be the Russians, but it was the SS. They put us up against the wall with a firing squad of five men. It's dreadful to think about it even now.
"Then an ordinary Wehrmacht officer appeared. Lady Luck was on our side. He stopped them."
Mowatt and his comrades were finally liberated after the Germans surrendered in May 1945.
As Mowatt suffered in captivity, the Highland Division was rebuilt with the single brigade that had escaped from France and with fresh recruits.
They played a key role in breaking the German lines at El Alamein. They then fought in Italy and Normandy, and in 1944, British commander Field Marshal Montgomery changed his order of battle in northern France to allow the 51st to liberate Saint-Valery.
Dunkirk: The Men They Left Behind by Sean Longden is published by Constable and will cost £20 in hardback. It will be published on May 29.
The full article contains 938 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
