An appeal for stories about Dunkirk, following the release of Christopher Nolan’s epic film, has struck a rich seam. Last week, I wrote about Jack Hunt, from Teesdale, one of last to be plucked to safety when an armada of small boats sailed to the rescue from England. Today, it’s the remarkable love story of a County Durham soldier called Mark Brown who survived – along with a little blue bottle of French perfume…

AS he waited for yet another deadly attack from the merciless German dive bombers, Mark Brown, a young British soldier, used his bare hands to dig into the sand in a desperate bid to find whatever protection he could from the shrapnel that would soon be flying.

As he did so, he unearthed a little blue bottle of perfume. It was half full and bore a silver label: “Soir De Paris – Evening In Paris.”

As the bombs began to fall, and the cries of horror again rose all around him, he shoved the bottle into a coat pocket and prayed.

And so began the bottle’s extraordinary, charmed journey from the bombarded beaches of Dunkirk to a quiet village in the North-East of England, where it still has pride of place in a family home.

Mark’s daughter, Marjorie Tennick, now 73, and living with husband Colin, in Barton, near Darlington, holds on to the bottle as if it is the most precious object on earth.

“I would never let it go,” she says. “It’s such a part of my dad’s story and all of the history that came out of what happened at Dunkirk.”

Mark Brown was born at Windlestone, near Chilton, and went into “gentleman’s service” at the age of 16, working as a Royal footman in London and then as a special constable.

With war about to break out in 1939, he was conscripted into the Army’s Expeditionary Force, serving with the Middlesex Regiment, and was sent overseas.

The Northern Echo:

By May 1940, he’d marched through Belgium and into northern France where, alongside hundreds of thousands of other allied troops, he found himself trapped on Dunkirk’s desolate coastline.

“He told us later that it was sheer hell,” says Marjorie. “German soldiers came every 30 minutes to machine gun them and then there were the air attacks too.”

Mark, 20 at the time, was on the beach for four days. “He said the nights were the worst because the air was full of the sound of wounded men crying out for their mothers. When the crying stopped, it was because they’d died,” Marjorie adds, solemnly.

Her father was one of the very, very lucky ones. With the little blue perfume bottle still hidden inside his coat, he found himself on a jetty, waiting to board a Naval vessel back to England. At the last minute, he was stopped by an officer – the boat was full and he was told he’d have to wait for the next one.

Mark watched the boat set sail for home without him but it didn’t get very far before it was blown out of the water by a German bomb, with all lives lost.

He eventually found a place on another boat, The Royal Daffodil. As it left the jetty, it came under fire and a machine-gunner was killed as everyone else dived for cover. Exhausted, Mark fell asleep below deck and was elated when he woke to the white cliffs of Dover.

“He never thought he’d see England again but somehow he’d made it back,” Marjorie explains.

When Mark thanked the boat’s captain for saving his life, the skipper simply responded by saying he was returning to France to pick up more soldiers.

Meanwhile, back in County Durham, a young woman called Emma Beevers, working at Egglestone Hall, Barnard Castle, received a field service postcard. It was the brief but wonderful news that Mark was safe. The couple had fallen in love before the war and, when they were reunited, Emma became the proud new owner of the little blue bottle of French perfume.

The Middlesex regiment was disbanded, with Mark being deployed to the Royal Engineers and rising to the rank of sergeant. During a period of leave in the harsh winter of 1941, he married Emma at Egglestone Church, amid huge snow drifts. Marjorie was born in 1943 and a brother, David, came along nine years later.

After the war, Mark got a job on the railways, initially working as a shunter at Darlington, and ending up being promoted to inspector, based at Hull station. He was 59 when he died of cancer in 1979. How appropriate that they should have sung Onward Christian Soldiers at his funeral.

Emma died 14 years ago, again from cancer. Right up to her death, she kept the little blue perfume bottle – long since emptied of any remaining scent – on her dressing table.

Today, the bottle is kept in a glass cabinet at Marjorie’s home in Barton, alongside pictures of her beloved father, and other memorabilia, including his Dunkirk medal and scroll of honour.

The Northern Echo:

Marjorie and Colin have a son and a daughter, Sharon and Kevin, and five grandchildren. They include 15-year-old Harry, who’s the “pot double” of his great-grandad, who survived the terrors of Dunkirk.

“When we’re gone, the bottle will be passed on down through the family,” says Marjorie. “It’s probably not worth anything, but to us it’s absolutely priceless.”