This week, a final light went out in the long, flickering memory of Dunkirk. The last known survivor of that desperate, courageous evacuation has died, aged 105. Duncan McInnes, the last known survivor of the Dunkirk evacuation, has passed away, before the 85th anniversary of Operation Dynamo is due to be commemorated.
A Royal Navy telegraphist aboard HMS Saladin, he braved enemy fire on seven rescue missions in 1940 during WW2. His courage helped save hundreds.
With his passing, we are now wholly reliant on history books, documentaries, and fading family stories to remember what he lived through, but we must remember it nonetheless.
In the early summer of 1940, the world held its breath as nearly 400,000 Allied soldiers were trapped on the beaches of Dunkirk, surrounded by advancing German forces. The situation was bleak. But what followed became one of the most extraordinary efforts of rescue and resilience in modern history.
Between 26 May and 4 June 1940, Operation Dynamo swung into motion. Over 850 vessels, a patchwork fleet of Royal Navy ships, merchant craft, fishing boats, lifeboats and pleasure yachts, affectionately known as the ‘Little Ships’, crossed the treacherous Channel. Their mission was to do the impossible: to bring our boys home.
They sailed into chaos, into strafing fire from above and shelling from land. They queued offshore as soldiers waded waist-deep through water to reach them. The beaches became harrowing scenes of patience and panic. And yet, from that maelstrom, over 338,000 soldiers were brought back to Britain. Wet, hungry, shaken, but alive.
Not every boat came back. Some were sunk. Some burned. And not every man made it to a deck. Around 68,000 British troops were killed, wounded or captured during the Battle of Dunkirk. The beaches were littered with the cost of war: rifles, helmets and those who could not be saved.
It was not a victory. It was a rescue. A defiant act of endurance and unity in the face of overwhelming odds. Churchill called it a “miracle of deliverance,” but the true miracle was the spirit of ordinary people doing something extraordinary, without ever knowing how their actions would echo through history.
And now, the last of those brave souls who stood on those sands and saw that horizon of hope has gone. He carried with him a piece of that moment, of that tide of humanity. We may never know the full scope of what he saw, what he feared, or what he carried with him long after the beaches were left behind. But we know this: we owe him, and every man who stood there, a quiet and unending gratitude.
To the last survivor, we say: thank you. Thank you for enduring, for returning, and for showing us that true courage rises from within, shaped not by fear, but by the quiet conviction that doing what is right matters more than the potential risk to ourselves.
Rest easy now Sir.
We will remember.
Photo by Mitchell Luo
