I never learnt much about WW2 while at school but recently I’ve been getting quite interested in finding out more about it. Appropriate as it’s the 60th anniversary of D-Day later on this year.

i’ve just finished watching the docu-drama “Dunkirk” on BBC2 and it’s been fascinating. I never knew the details of what happened there aside from knowing that a lot of soldiers got rescued from Dunkirk by a load of ships that included some non-Naval ships.

I didn’t realise that the rescue took place over several days, that “a lot of soldiers” was about 250,000 British and 40,000 French and that they were stretched out over 10 miles of beach, being constantly bombarded by the Luftwaffe and had the German army closing in from all sides.

Now I know what they meant when they talked about “Dunkirk Spirit”. Perserverance. Courage. Endurance. The commitment of men fighting against an enemy who had invaded other countries, who, by all accounts, indiscriminately killed injured soldiers, prisoners of war, civilians and, allegedly, consistently flouted the Geneva Conventions (most of which were reprised in the periods after WW2).

My grandfather fought in the war. Like Karen’s, he was at Pegasus Bridge (but with the Worcestershire Yeomanry, Royal Artillery regiment attached to the 6th Airborne). I sometimes wish I’d asked him more about his experiences - not that I think he’d ever have told me much. I vaguely remember him going in to hospital to have a bit of shrapnel removed - and this was in the late 70’s, early 80’s - and I remember the first time he showed me a Nazi naval officer’s sword that he had retrieved as a memento.

It wasn’t until I saw “Saving Private Ryan” that I really wondered what he had gone through. The story itself was a bit jingoistic and “Boy’s Own”, but there were moments in it that I recognised as being similar to what my grandfather must have experienced. Remember the scene where the soldier finds the Hitler Youth dagger? That - for me - was my grandfather finding his sword.

I wondered then about the things that my grandfather saw. The experiences he had that I know he never talked about with his family. Watching the Dunkirk series this week has bought that home to me. True stories about men who knew they were going to die but who regardlessly fought on valiantly. They fought, not to defend themselves, but because they knew that it was the right thing to do. They fought knowing that their sacrifice would allow the tens of thousands of men on the beaches at Dunkirk would be granted more time to be evacuated.

I wonder whether I could do the same. I wonder whether I could hold my cool under fire and be able to stand my position. I think I’d probably throw up, freeze and surrender at the first available oppurtunity. I have a feeling that I’d be a total and utter coward - too selfish and afraid of my own dying to be able to give my life in defense of others.

I’m not proud of that feeling.

Learning about the story of the evacuation from Dunkirk and the valour of the troops there, has inspired in me a feeling of pride that I can claim to be British. Or rather, considering the war we waged last year, I don’t so much have feeling of being proud that I am British but, rather, I’m proud of what my grandfather’s generation did, of what they fought for and of what, sixty years ago, being British stood for.

My own lack of self esteem and feelings of cowardice aside, I get the general feeling that twenty first century British society is, without generalising, very individualistic. Should a situation equivalent to Dunkirk occur now, I doubt we would see the same spirit engulf the nation. That makes me sad.

If nothing else comes from remembering that it’s sixty years since the turn of the tide in the Second World War , I think I am finally beginning to understand what John Donne meant when he wrote the following passage:

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.