British paras pausing for a smoke.

1 troop, No. 10(IA) Commando.

Reveille sounds and the parade is done
The hero remembered, forgotten by none
They leave to start the journey back
In a coffin draped in the Union Jack

The Western media perhaps avoided this picture. It shows men of the Wehrmacht giving a ceremonial burial to a dead British soldier. Men of honour…

”This man opened fire on our sentries during the night of May 3rd and 4th”

Captured soldiers of the 51st Highland Division, which had not been trapped at Dunkirk with the rest of the BEF, was surrounded at St Valéry-en-Caux in Normandy and surrendered on 12th June, 1940.

Minutemen confronting the British.

The average age of a RAF pilot in 1940 was 20. The strain they were under is clearly written on the face of Squadron Leader B J E ‘Sandy’ Lane (centre), pictured here aged 23. He was killed in combat 2 years later. To think that men the same age as me were up in the skies pitted against the battle hardened Luftwaffe Ace’s is very humbling.

A Hawker Hurricane serving on the Burma front being armed in preparation for a reconnaissance mission. No.3 Photographic Reconnaissance Unit.

James Edgar “Johnnie” Johnson