TED CHAMBERS will carry to his grave shrapnel that penetrated his leg on the beaches of La Panne, during the Dunkirk evacuation.

"We got shelled, it was horrendous," he said. "I got it in the top of the left thigh and in my right shin. They say the bone is still damaged now."

Ted, now 94, from Strood, Kent, was a seasoned soldier when he crossed to France aboard the Tynwald package steamer on September 29 1939. Having joined up at the age of 17 in 1933, he had already seen service in Egypt and Palestine, with the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Regiment.

"We were among the first to cross," he said. "Our job was to find billets for the troops who would follow on after us. We had four 15 cwt Morris trucks, but our company truck was a furniture van and our accoutrements truck was a coal lorry."

The winter of 1939-1940 was severe, and near Metz Ted slid into a tank trap and broke his ankle. "The Grenadiers got wiped up near there," he said. "While I was in Metz hospital a young guardsman was brought in with frostbite. I've never heard anyone cry like he did. The treatment was so painful."

Near Grimdorf the platoon sergeant major was killed by an advancing German platoon. "I helped pick him up," said Ted. "The snow was two to three feet thick at the time. He was a married man with three children."

Eventually Ted's regiment was forced to pull back to a point on the Belgian border where they set about building block houses. The cement was so bad that some of these fell down when the guns fired.

They remained in a forward position, helping to delay the German advance, and getting shelled and mortared for their pains.

Withdrawal to the coast became inevitable. After immobilising their vehicles and leaving them in a field for the RAF to bomb, Ted and his group set off on a 20 mile march to La Panne.

"We ended up in woods at the canal end of La Panne," he said. "We were constantly shelled and mortared, all the branches were blown off the trees. A young fusilier behind me was killed and we buried him in a small chapel nearby. I've been back there since and seen where we buried him.

"We went to the beach on three different nights and each time had to return because there were so many people. They were forming up in their thousands. On the beach we were shelled, dive bombed and machine gunned.

"On the last day of May we did get onto the beach and went forward with the water up to our chests. At last a minesweeper came in close enough for us to get on board. We'd been three days with no food and three days with no sleep. We were dead beat. We laid on the deck and went straight to sleep.

"What kept us going was bars of Toblerone we'd found in a shop on the way".

The minesweeper, HMS Gossamer, travelled a long zig-zag course into the North Sea to avoid mines, and eventually deposited her cargo of 810 soldiers at Sheerness, where at last they were given a cup of tea and a sandwich.

Because of his injuries, Ted was transferred to a REME workshop unit. His next trip to France was with the invasion forces. His unit's job was to repair Bren gun carriers and the first task was to restore 22 vehicles sunk during the landings. "We got every one of them going again," he said.