Hello, welcome to the history hit World Wars Podcast, a podcast dedicated to that turbulent period in history between 1914 and 1945.

And in this episode, we're jumping back to May 1940, when over 330,000 British and French troops were being encircled

by an advancing German force and they were trapped on the beaches at Dunkirk.

And so in this episode, first recorded for Dan Snow's history here,

Dan talks to the veterans of Dunkirk,

but not those who were trapped on the beaches.

Instead, he talks to those who sailed the little

ships of Dunkirk, who were responsible for the miracle of Dunkirk, where 700 private boats sailed from Ramsgate in England to Dunkirk in France,

over 50 miles that journey, between the 26th of May and the 4th of June,

to save the troops as part of Operation Dynamo. I'm so lucky to be sat here now. I think it's fantastic to see this lovely smiling

parks of countryside with the Thames so placid and the

Surulean sky.

I'm so so lucky.

Did you think you'd be seeing this ever again when you're on the beaches at Dunkoet back in 1940?

There are many occasions in the Second World War when I didn't think I might live the next second, let alone 10 years or 20 years or 30 years, I thought

it was highly likely not to live very long.

I've seen the bombs coming down like pebbles out of the sky

from stucers diving on us and the next second I thought this

one's coming and then it would veer off and my mouth would be full of

of a tingling sensation by the enzymes that were floating around my body and I really

thought I wasn't going to live very long and that has been replicated on many occasions

in that war so I'm so so lucky so lucky when so many of my friends didn't make it and how did you come to be in

...