THE incredible story of a Gourock prisoner of war who took a last stand at Dunkirk has been uncovered by his daughter and told for the first time.

Norman Macleod was a sergeant in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and sent to France in 1940 with the allied forces as part of the doomed mission to stop the Nazis taking France.

New wartime blockbuster Dunkirk tells the story of the mass evacuation of hundreds of thousands of soldiers forced in to a retreat.

But Norman was one of the 10,000 heroic Scots ‘left behind’ to fight on while the evacuation took place.

He was eventually captured with his comrades in St Valery in France.

Norman was forced to march to Germany and remained a PoW for almost five years until the end of the war.

On his return home he met and married Marta Kopp, a Lithuanian refugee who was working as a nurse in Edinburgh.

She had not only fled the Red Army but survived the worst maritime disaster in history.

Ethnic German Marta was on board the Wilhelm Gustloff when it was torpedoed and around 9,400 people perished — she was one of only 1,000 to survive.

Twenty years after the couple married, they both died only months apart from cancer.

Their remarkable story would have been lost forever, but for their daughter Lorna MacEwen.

She discovered a postcard from a prisoner of war camp in her great aunt’s house in Gourock and it sparked her interest.

Lorna, 64, from North Berwick said: “I was only 18 when my parents died. 

“I didn’t know much about all this until many years after they died. I knew my father had been in the war and some things about where my mum came from.

“My dad was born on Armistice Day 11 November 1918, the end of the First World War. 

“It was supposed to be the war to end all wars and yet this is what happened to someone born on that day.

“I want to tell their story because I think it is important that it is never forgotten.”

When Norman, who grew up in Park Terrace, Gourock, was released at the end of the war he  joined the civil service and settled in Edinburgh.

It was there he met Marta, who was working as a nurse in the local hospital. She had arrived from a refugee camp in Denmark, where she was taken after her rescue from the Wilheim Gustloff.

The pair were married in 1951 and Lorna was born in 1953 and her sister was born in 1957.

Lorna said: “We had a happy childhood and I have lovely memories of my summer holidays spent in Gourock with my Great Aunt Annie and Great Uncle Stanley Brown.”

It was only when her father’s aunt Annie died many years later that Lorna made an incredible find.

She discovered a postcard in her great aunt’s house from Norman dated 24th August 1941 and sent from a prisoner of war camp in Germany — Stalag 21A.

There was also a copy of the Stornoway Gazette with a map of the prison camps.

Lorna then began to follow a trail and uncovered her parents’ past.

Norman was the son of John and Frances Macleod.

John was born in Stornoway and moved to Gourock.

Mr & Mrs Macleod lived in their house, Arnish, in Park Terrace and John was the Gourock High headmaster from 1918 to 1945.

After leaving school Norman went to Glasgow University to study medicine but switched to history and mathematics before he was called up.

Norman began his military service in July 1939 as a private then a sergeant in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders.

In January 1940 he was posted to the 154th Brigade of the 51st Highland Division and a month later sent to France.

He was part of the  British Expeditionary Force but they soon found themselves pushed back by the advancing German troops.

Hundreds of thousands of soldiers had to be evacuated from Dunkirk from May 26 to June 4.

Sergeant MacLeod was part of the division who became known as  the ‘men left behind’.

They fought a rearguard action against the Germans, providing cover to let the evacuation take place.

But the soldiers were eventually pushed into the coastal town of St Valery-en Caux and captured on June 12.

Along with other prisoners of war Norman endured forced marches eastward and was held in various camps for four years and 330 days until May 11 1945.

He was discharged in May 1946 with a glowing reference from the Commanding Officer of the Civil Resettlement Unit:
It read: ‘A pleasant, intelligent, well educated senior NCO. A man who sets himself the very highest possible standards and lives up to them.

“I can recommend him with confidence.”

By this time Norman was 27-years-old and would never return to his studies, instead working for the civil service in Edinburgh.

His wife Lithuanian Marta was born on 25 August 1926 in the village of Balsiai, the youngest of six children.

In the summer of 1944 the family were scattered and separated as they fled from Stalin’s Red Army, who were on the move from the east.

Marta was working as a nurse in a military hospital in West Prussia when she had to flee again from the Soviet army.

She walked with the injured German soldiers over minefields before reaching the port of Gotenhafen, used as an evacuation point for German troops and refugees during the winter of 1944-45.

She boarded the ill-fated Wilhelm Gustloff, which was fired on by Soviet submarines in the Baltic Sea on January 30 1945 and sank taking around 9,400 to their death. It was the worst loss of life in a single sinking.

Marta was rescued and taken to a camp in Denmark before ending up in Edinburgh.

She was only reunited with her own family by the Red Cross in the 1950s.

Lorna uncovered her mother’s story after writing to her mum’s sister.

The Wilhelm Gustloff tragedy inspired the book ‘Salt to the Sea’ by Ruta Septys.

The writer got in touch with Lorna through an online forum as one of the characters in her book is a Lithuanian nurse.

Marta died aged 44 in 1971 a few months before Norman who passed away aged 52.

Lorna said: “My mother died before I knew her story and reading Ruta’s book has helped me more than anything else to understand what she went through.”