ONLY one member of the Tavistock Dunkirk Veterans' Association was due to attend the 60th and final national commemoration ceremonies at Dunkirk, but unfortunately suffered a heart attack just before departure.

Many young men from in and around Tavistock were plucked from the deadly beaches of Dunkirk in June 1940.

Most were members of the Tavistock Battery, formed from the town's Territorial Army unit and posted to France the day war broke out. Many were new recruits with little or no training.

Locally, the anniversary will be commemorated with a church service later this month.

'Then the branch closes on June 30,' said Joe Mitchell, president of the Tavistock branch of the Dunkirk Veterans' Association.

'We've got to do it. We are all up in our eighties and you've got a job to find people to hold the various posts — treasurer, secretary and so on — and raising funds. It's almost an impossible task,' he said. 'But we can keep together and have informal meetings.'

Joe joined the Territorials in 1938 and was mobilised in September 1939. The unit was sent straight across to France.

Many had only been in the army a week and most had never fired a gun.

For Joe it was the first time he had left Tavistock.

He was back on British soil nine months later, arriving at Margate on June 3 1940 as part of the historic mass evacuation of British and French soldiers routed by the enemy sweep through Europe.

Joe had waited three days on the beach for a boat under constant attack from the screaming Stuka dive bombers, but even that wasn't the end of the nightmare.

'Up in the dunes and down in the water — it wasn't a very nice experience, but we were the lucky ones, there were a lot of people who didn't come back,' he said.

'I came across in an old boat of some description. We broke down in mid-Channel and had to remain there waiting for spare parts to be brought from England. It was a nightmare — bombs were dropping all about us for most of the night in the moonlight and there were warnings of U-boats in the area.'

The service will take place at Tavistock's St Eustachius' Church on Sunday June 25 at 6pm when the association will lay up its standard.