Dunkirk opens as 400,000 British and Allied troops are surrounded by enemy forces. Trapped on the beach with their backs to the sea, they face an impossible situation as the enemy closes in. George Wagner was one of those young men and after decades of burying the memory of his experience, he opened up to Gemma Morgan (Former Army Captain, Kosovo) and Louis Nethercott (Former Royal Marine Commando, Afghanistan) in the Contact short Film Dunkirk Today.

Alongside Warner Brothers, Contact has produced the short film Dunkirk Today which highlights the similarities and differences across the past 77 years of conflict.

The World Premiere of Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk in Leicester Square tomorrow night (13 July), will be attended by George Wagner alongside HRH Prince Henry of Wales and two Veterans of Kosovo and Afghanistan.

George Wagner, of Lichfield, escaped the beaches of Dunkirk in a rowing boat aged 19. While he helped fellow soldiers to reach rescue boats by building piers out of trucks with his regiment the Royal Engineers, many of the ‘blokes’ in his unit didn’t make it home. He says it was ‘pot luck’ that he managed to escape relentless attacks from the air and the ground with little or no shelter on an open beach.