John Common

This incident happened to my parents before I was born. My father David Common was fighting as a BEF soldier in France , June 1940. Told to make a run for it to Dunkirk and ordered to abandon everything except rifle, he threw away a small parcel of gifts he'd previously bought my mother and their daughter ( my sister Edith). The gifts included, I believe, a silk night dress and a doll. He had written his home address on the parcel. He made it to Dunkirk but was trapped on the beaches for 5 or 6 days before being successfully rescued. He returned home several weeks after this where he was astonished to be presented by my mother with the same parcel he had last seen lying at the roadside in France. Apparently another soldier passed that way, sometime after father , saw the parcel and took it with him to Dunkirk. He was more fortunate than father and was evacuated the same day, and on arrival in Dover, posted it . The parcel made its way to Sunderland and arrived before father was even taken off the beaches in France. The soldier attached a note explaining how and where he'd found the parcel and when mother read this she recognised his name as that of the son of a next door neighbour from several years previously. She had moved and changed her name through marriage since then. Attempts to contact the soldier and thank him were in vain.