Not far from the sand dunes at Dunkirk there is a British war cemetery and, as I enter it, I assume, for a single perturbing minute, that vandals have been at work.
'There was more excitement than fear': Charlie Waite, Dunkirk veteran, pictured at the time of the evacuation
Some of the creamy white headstones are at crooked angles, like a set of once perfect teeth that have been rearranged by a knuckle-duster.
Then I notice a couple of the ground staff on a motorised cart and realise that, actually, the Portland stones are being systematically taken up, cleaned and replaced in preparation for the 70th anniversary of what was, according to Churchill, a ‘miracle of deliverance'.
For nine days, between May 26 and June 4 1940, some 338,226 troops were evacuated from this corner of a foreign field that is forever England.
About a third of them were French but most were British and they were surrounded by overwhelming German forces. Their mass surrender looked inevitable.
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