IT'S 67 years this month since the famous Dunkirk evacuation, and author Hugh Sebag-Montefiore has uncovered a fascinating and bizarre link involving Poole. When the British Expeditionary Force retreated to the French coast and small boat owners were requested to make their craft available to the Navy, three former Black Shirts, who before the Second World War had kept their boat in the Dorset port, decided to take her to Dunkirk where they rescued hundreds of soldiers.

"I was surprised to find the Black Shirts supporting the British Army against Hitler," said the writer. "Stranger still is what happened next - after all they had done at Dunkirk, two of the men were arrested on their return and held under the Defence Regulations of 1939."

One of the former Black Shirts, Eric Hamilton-Piercy, was arrested at his Sussex home, in front of his wife and four children. "The arrest is the reward I get for what the newspapers please to call a nation's thanks," he said.

"My only crime is nearly four years ago having been a member of what was then an organisation anti-Communist and, as far as I knew then, patriotically British."

Hamilton-Piercy admitted that until the end of 1935 he had been "comparatively active", organising meetings of the National Defence Forces of the British Union of Fascists, "but then I became a Catholic convert, and being a Catholic bars me from having any sympathy with any country at war with Britain, as such countries have been condemned by His Holiness the Pope."

Along with two friends, he served in the River Fire Service, "on our own boat, which we bought from Poole, Dorset, for that purpose."

The friends volunteered to help at Dunkirk - they were the first civilian crew, and travelled across in a convoy with six other craft, all naval vessels.

"We hadn't reached Dunkirk before we were machine-gunned from swooping aircraft, but fortunately only had the top of our mast shot away. Some of us had never been under fire before.

"We remained at Dunkirk for a shade under nine hours, taking men from the beach to destroyers and cargo boat laying off in deeper water, saving in all over 450 men.

"We saw our kinsmen literally blown to pieces after we had, as we thought, deposited them in safety on the larger ships. We ourselves were deliberately bombed by a plane that had missed a destroyer and our boat was actually blown out of the water.

"A number of holes appeared on her starboard side, but fortunately none of us were hit.

"The boat commenced to leak and after another hour's work, we were instructed by the lieutenant in charge of the remaining boat (the others were destroyed) to follow him back to Ramsgate.

"This we did across the minefields, through a good deal of fog and finally arrived with only four gallons of petrol left and making water fast."

Hamilton-Piercy and the other former Black Shirt, called Colin Dick, were later released.

  • Dunkirk: Fight to the Last Man by Hugh Sebag-Montefiore has just been released in paperback by Penguin, £7.99.