Lucky Fred - the 98-year-old Darlington man who escaped Dunkirk on the last boat home

NOW 98, Fred Willans says he remembers it as if it all happened yesterday.

Churchill had despatched an armada of small ships to rescue thousands of British troops, driven to the sea and being mercilessly bombarded by the enemy.

Amid the chaos and bloodshed, Fred had made a tactical decision. While others had joined the mad scramble to get to the front of the queue for a ride out of the hell of Dunkirk, he had stayed as far back as possible.

“I don’t know why but I just thought it was best to keep my head down and stay right at the back until nearly everyone else had gone,” he recalls.

With hardly any living souls left on the beach, he made his way to a wrecked pier, jumped from one beam to another, and clambered over dead bodies to board a fishing boat.

He was handed a Bren gun and told to open fire if the boat came under attack, either from the sea or the air.

“You’re lucky - this is the last official boat to get out of Dunkirk,” he remembers being told by the skipper. “We’re heading for Ramsgate.”

Frederick Arthur Willans had been born at 48 Thornton Street, Darlington, on August 12, 1919 and joined the Territorial Army at the Drill Hall in Larchfield Street when he was 18.

When war was declared, he was sent across to France as a Morse Code operator with the 50th Northumberland Division, and seconded to an artillery unit.

As they’d crossed a field on the approach to Dunkirk, a cry went up to take cover and Fred leapt clear of the truck he’d been travelling in. Seconds later, the truck was crushed by debris from a nearby building.

“Once we reached the beach, the German planes kept coming and our Spitfires kept fighting them off,” he says.

“And remember, those lads were fighting without water, grub or knowledge. The whole thing was absolutely horrendous but I really was lucky because I caught the last boat home.”

When that last boat arrived at Ramsgate, the tide was out and Fred and the two other soldiers on board were exhausted.

“Mind you, there were some lovely women there to give us tea and sandwiches before putting us on a train north,” he recalls.

Agonisingly, the train passed through his home town of Darlington – crossing Parkgate Bridge – on its way to Aberdeen, where the survivors were interrogated and examined before being given three weeks’ leave.

It should have been enough for anyone but the war was far from over for Fred – not by a long way. There’s not enough space to do justice to the epic journey that followed but it began with a posting to North Africa. After being part of the pursuit of the enemy as far as Tobruk, Fred was captured by a German patrol.

He spent months in a prisoner of war camp in Italy but, after hearing of plans to transfer him and his fellow prisoners to Poland, Fred had had enough.

“I’m not going to bloody Poland,” he declared. “I’m getting out of here tonight.”

And, along with two others, he did. In fact, the escape was surprisingly straightforward. Under cover of darkness, they forced open a door, squeezed under a fence, legged it into a forest and walked and walked until they reached British troop line.

Fred made it home a second time and was reunited with Kathleen, the local lass, who became his wife of 62 years.

They made their home back in Darlington, where Fred worked firstly as a painter and decorator and then as a postman.

Fit as a fiddle, he completed the London Marathon twice but, these days, he needs a walking frame to get round his bungalow where he lives, independently, in Darlington’s west end.

There’s not much wrong with his memory, however, as he recounts his incredible story. “I was just lucky,” he says again. “Really lucky to catch the last boat home.”