On this day in 1940 — the beaches at Dunkirk, and a Flight Sergeant already on his way home.

86 years ago today, on 26 May 1940, what remained of the British, French and Belgian armies stood in long lines at the water’s edge at Dunkirk, waiting for boats. Winston Churchill had ordered the evacuation four days earlier. Few believed it could succeed.

Just down the coast, the story had already played out in miniature. A few days before — sometime between Monday evening, 20 May and nightfall on Thursday, 23 May — a young Flight Sergeant had jumped from a moving train at Étaples. The Bristol Blenheim he had been flying over the Battle for France was already wreckage. He was concussed, bandaged, and had no money. The German Army was closing on Boulogne from the east, through the forest. Fighter Command flew 198 sorties on 22 May alone, fighting to keep the Channel ports open just a little longer.

Somewhere inside that cauldron of burning destroyers, requisitioned ferries and stranded Guardsmen, someone got hold of Sgt John Christie and put him on one of the last boats to leave Boulogne before the city fell. He came home to Brechin with his head heavily bandaged and not a penny to his name.

Where the Story went Wrong

The official record is uncertain — one published account even has him killed over Berlin later in the war. He wasn’t. Four years and two months later, Pilot Officer John Christie was navigating an aircraft over a small commune in the Beaujolais hills called Ternand.

That, of course, is another story.

The full account of John Christie’s two crashes — and what the records still get wrong — will appear in Écrivélo — Journeys through War-Torn Europe on Your Bike.