It is September 1939. Shortly after war is declared, Anthony Rhodes is sent to France, serving with the British Army. His days are filled with the minutiae and mundanities of Army life – friendships, billeting, administration – as the months of the ‘Phoney War’ quickly pass and the conflict seems a distant prospect.

It is only in the spring of 1940 that the true situation becomes clear; the men are ordered to retreat to the coast and the beaches of Dunkirk, where they face a desperate and terrifying wait for evacuation.

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• About the Author
• Introduction
• CHAPTER ONE Soldiers of Misfortune
• CHAPTER TWO Carnival Journey
• CHAPTER THREE M. Octavo Busch; and the Nice Conduct of a Clouded Cane
• CHAPTER FOUR Army Hierarchy
• CHAPTER FIVE Of Castles, Food, and Champagne Magnates
• CHAPTER SIX Pillbox Land
• CHAPTER SEVEN Work
• CHAPTER EIGHT Low Life in Lille
• CHAPTER NINE Alsatian Journey
• CHAPTER TEN Maginot Outpost
• CHAPTER ELEVEN Paris
• CHAPTER TWELVE The War Starts
• CHAPTER THIRTEEN Belgian Blues
• CHAPTER FOURTEEN Brussels Believes in the British
• CHAPTER FIFTEEN The Germans Arrive
• CHAPTER SIXTEEN We ‘Take up New Positions’
• CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Booby-traps and Clarinets
• CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Madame Ko-Ko at War
• CHAPTER NINETEEN Lille Revisited
• CHAPTER TWENTY Retreat to the Coast
• CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE Dunkirk
• CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO The Beaches