LES Collett was so keen to follow in his father’s footsteps that he lied about his age and joined up at 16 in 1936.

Four years later, he was one of the youngest men in the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry’s 4th Battalion that fought a heroic rearguard action at the hilltop town of Cassel, 20 miles south of Dunkirk.

Private Collett was captured by the Germans but escaped, grabbed a rifle and bayonet from a dead British soldier and made his way to Dunkirk.

He was shot in the right shoulder as he waited to be rescued but still made it on board a boat to take him back to Blighty.

Now 89, the father-of-two lives with his wife Gladys, 88, in Wolvercote, the village where he was born.

Mr Collett recalled: “I got shot trying to hold off the Germans but then I managed to get on a boat which took me back to Ramsgate for a nice cup of tea.

“There were a lot of lads who didn’t make it, my friend Larry Allen lost a leg and half an arm and I was very lucky to get out with just a bullet wound.

“I don’t think of myself as a hero. I was just a soldier doing my duty.”

Mr Collett said he and fellow troops in the 4th Battalion had been involved in a “hell of a battle” at Cassel.

He added: “If I hadn’t escaped I would have been sent to a prisoner-of-war camp and I probably wouldn’t be here today.

“We were there for a purpose – to defeat Hitler – and this week I will be remembering those who didn’t make it back home. I was one of the lucky ones.”

Following the war, he worked as a chef in Brighton returning to Oxford, to work in the car factory for 37 years before he retired. He helped to form the Wolvercote branch of the Royal British Legion and has been a regular in Armistice Day parades outside the village church.

Mr Collett added: “The 70th anniversary of Dunkirk is a big one. It was a big sacrifice and Dunkirk will never be forgotten.”

Seventy years ago, Bob Halliday stood helpless on a Dunkirk beach wondering if he was witnessing a vision of hell.

Now aged 90, the great-grandfather, of Didcot, recalled: “It was chaotic. We were on both sides of the road, hundreds of us, just marching.

“We started to meet refugees coming with mattresses and prams. The roads were completely chock-a-block.”

By the time they got to Dunkirk, soldiers filled the beach. He said: “The troops were put into lines of 50 in a group. When they said go, you ran to get aboard a boat.

“We all tried to keep our spirits up.

“Each time a raid came, we dived all over the beach.

“Then we would regroup and look for everyone.

“We were just standing there getting machine gunned and bombed and hoping we were going to get on a boat.

“It was hellish.

“The thing that struck me most was some of the boys panicked and tried to swim out. Their bodies kept coming back all the time.”

Mr Halliday, who moved to Didcot in 1960 to work at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, celebrates his 65th wedding anniversary next year with wife Kay, 84.