Dunkirk: The History Behind the Major Motion Picture. Joshua Levine

wear coloured shoulder titles. Helmets, meanwhile, could be worn with or without hessian camouflage covers.

      Such standardisation of uniform was intended to offer as few clues as possible to a curious enemy. (The only evidence of personal identity were the green and red identity tags worn round the neck, bearing the soldier’s name, number and religion.) This being the army, however, the rules were quickly tested. Some regiments continued to wear old-style metal shoulder titles, others wore coloured shoulder titles, and others still wore sleeve ‘flashes’ in different patterns and colours. So while the majority of British soldiers at Dunkirk would have looked uniformly spartan (particularly when wearing the plain, heavy greatcoat), there would have been plenty of exceptions.

      One exception was the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders, the only British Expeditionary Force regiment to wear the kilt in France – despite being officially forbidden to do so. The tartan was known as Cameron of Erracht, although it would often have been obscured by ‘kilt aprons’. These were plain kilt covers, tied round the waist. With their prominent frontal pouches, they gave the wearer the air of a khaki kangaroo.

      Army food was rarely savoured. There was no Army Catering Corps until 1941, and according to George Wagner, the thickest bloke was usually picked to do the cooking. Wagner’s company cook, known as ‘Mad Jack’, was known for his indigestible curry. ‘Anybody who volunteered could become a cook,’ says Norman Prior of the Lancashire Fusiliers, who has memories of the unenthusiastic volunteers dolloping out lumps of Maconochies stew – that unloved, tinned staple of the last war.

      An alternative existed. British soldiers, raised on plain diets, were now in a country where food was savoured and celebrated, and where unusual animals were eaten with rich sauces. But, according to James Lansdale Hodson, the British were mostly unwilling to try anything new: ‘Some … who have the opportunity of having a lunch such as soup, sardines, veal and coffee, much prefer egg and chips. They don’t like omelettes much … It’s fried eggs the soldiers want, not scrambled eggs.’

      Scottish NCO Alexander Frederick paid five francs each evening for the same meal – a plate of egg and chips, a bowl of café au lait and a chunk of bread. Spending most of his spare time in a Normandy café run by a widow, John Williams had only one complaint: she could not fry an egg. ‘So I went into the kitchen one day and asked whether I could show her.’

      Not everybody conformed to the stereotype. Colin Ashford enjoyed trying new foods in Lille; the local cakes, he says, were far better than anything he ate at home. And he tried horsemeat and chips. ‘It was all right …’

      There were unfamiliar drinks on offer too. Estaminets were cafés serving alcohol where some men learned to drink wine and lager, while others settled for their usual dark beer. It was almost effeminate to drink light ale or lager, remembers John Williams. ‘Nowadays, I see Marks and Spencer full of wines and it makes me laugh when I think of the days when wine was something rather strange that the French liked.’

      And while Williams claims that British soldiers never caused any trouble, sometimes, of course, they did. In December 1939, a twenty-three-year-old military policeman, Lance Corporal Rowson Goulding, was charged with murder following a fight in an estaminet. A study of the court-martial transcript reveals some undisputed facts. Goulding and four colleagues were drinking together in the Café de la Mairie in Drocourt when they became involved in a brawl with locals. Chairs and bottles were thrown, and minutes later shots were fired in the street, and a local man, Fernand Bince, was killed.

      French witnesses to the brawl claimed that the soldiers were very drunk. They had started pouring their own drinks, breaking glasses, and taking cigars from behind the counter. When asked to pay, said the French, the soldiers resisted and started a fight. They were all eventually thrown out of the estaminet, but not before some of the locals – including Fernand Bince – had been injured.

      The soldiers, on the other hand, denied being drunk. They claimed that one of their colleagues had been injured in an unprovoked attack by a local man – which had led to the brawl. They said that they had helped to carry their injured colleague outside, and that Goulding had been particularly angry about the incident.

      Whichever version – if either – is accurate, it seems that Goulding then hurried back to his billet and seized a revolver from a colleague before returning to the café. Bince may too have fetched a gun before also returning to the café. There were no witnesses to subsequent events – but several shots were heard, and Goulding was seen dragging Bince down the street by the ankles. Bince died shortly afterwards in a British casualty clearing station. He had been shot once in the chest.

      The court martial found Goulding guilty of murder and sentenced him to death. But two letters in mitigation sit on the court file. The first was dictated by Bince’s mother and translated into English. She expresses the greatest sympathy for Goulding, and begs the authorities to show him mercy. ‘I would not have his mother weeping for her son as I do for mine.’

      The second letter, from the local mayor, also urges a reprieve. In touchingly flawed English, he writes: ‘It certainly is not because a man has committed a grave fault that we shall cease to love the British Army. In taking into consideration my request, you will foster further the love and, this is why, with my respect, I would ask you to be as clement as possible for this poor Corporal.’

      In the event, Goulding was reprieved. His sentence was commuted to life in prison. And these letters reveal a period when the French could forgive the British a great deal. As George Wagner says, ‘They used to look on us as though we were saviours.’