WHEN Les Collett was carried on to a boat at Dunkirk, wounded and losing blood, he never thought he’d live to see his 90th birthday.

But on November 19, surrounded by family, he will be celebrating the landmark birthday with a party at the local Royal British Legion.

It comes days after Mr Collett, from Wolvercote, will lead prayers at the Wolvercote Remembrance Day ceremony on November 14.

He has been laying the wreath of poppies and reciting the legion’s prayer at the ceremony every year for decades.

But 70 years ago on a beach in Northern France, Mr Collett thought he would never get home.

He said: “I joined up to the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire light infantry in 1936 when I was 16 and so we were one of the first to be sent to France when war broke out.

“We fought a lot there, trying to keep the Jerries back, and were then the first into Belgium. The Germans had far superior weaponry – all I had was my rifle, bayonet and knife – and we were always on the retreat.”

At one point, Mr Collett was captured by German troops.

He said: “I was taken with a few others into some woods near a churchyard and we were kept there for four or five days.

“The Germans took all my possessions, but I met up with a few Gloucester chaps and we decided to make a break for it.

“We split into two separate groups of two, took our opportunity and ran for it.

“The other two did not get very far.

“We had not been going long before we heard the machine gun fire.”

Mr Collett escaped and used a small map taken from a calendar in a French farmhouse to guide him back northwards, where he met some allied troops and joined them. He keeps the map, now bloodstained and watermarked from fighting at Dunkirk, with other possessions from his time in the army.

Over the followingweeks, he fought his way back to the northern coast, where the retreat from Dunkirk was in full swing.

He said: “There was quite a battle going on there, I can tell you.

“We were just trying to get as many men off the beach as we could. The German planes were circling overhead, divebombing us with their machine guns.”

Mr Collett was shot in the back trying to keep the Germans back, but he managed to get on to a rowing boat in the sea and was taken to a large steamboat.

The bullet was later removed at hospital in Kent.

Mr Collett never returned to France, but was instead posted to Northern Ireland and later trained as a commando in Scotland.

Following the war and after a brief time as a chef in Brighton, he came back to Oxford.

He said: “My family wanted me home where I belong, so I came back to Wolvercote and have lived here ever since.”

Mr Collett worked as a car sprayer at Morris Motors for nearly 40 years until his retirement.

He and wife Gladys have been married 68 years and have two children, Michael, 66, and Gillian, 62.

They also have grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren, which Mr Collett said “were too many to count”.

And talking about the upcoming Remembrance Sunday, he said it was important he could still make it every year.

He said: “I can’t walk very well anymore, so I can’t take part in the march, but there’s so few of us left now.

“A lot of my friends never made it back that day. A lot of men died.

“And we should never forget them.”