A CADET on board Britain’s biggest warship joined up after discovering that he would not have been born without the Royal Navy.

Officer cadet Robert Coatsworth’s grandfather, Tommy Coatsworth, was one of the last men off the beach at Dunkirk during the evacuation of 338,000 British and French troops in 1940.

The Green Howard, then 22, had been shot twice and left for dead on the sands of northern France, as the exodus to escape Hitler’s advancing troops took place.

His dog tags were removed and sent with a telegram to his mother to inform her of his death.

It was only when a Navy lieutenant, making a final search of the beach, shone a torch in his eyes that Mr Coatsworth moved and he was pulled from the bodies and put on the last ship home.

If it had not been for that sailor, Mr Coatsworth would have died – and his grandson, of Mickleton, near Barnard Castle, would never have been born.

Robert, 26, who is studying to be a sailor at Britannia Royal Marine College, in Dartmouth, Devon, is completing his training aboard HMS Ocean.

The helicopter carrier, Sunderland’s adopted ship, is nearing the end of a fivemonth deployment in the Atlantic.

He said: “The story of how granddad survived is a family legend.

“But for that Royal Navy lieutenant who was searching for survivors among the bodies gathered under a destroyed pierhead, neither of us would have been here.

“Granddad was in the last boat that came back, a corvette, which was divebombed as it sailed across the Channel.

“They brought him up on a stretcher from the mess deck and as the ship was bombed he nearly went over the side. He was only saved by the guard rail – which we cadets are told we must never lean on”

Mr Coatsworth was treated at hospital in Bournemouth and he and his wife Irene went on to have three children and six grandchildren.

He spent eight years in the Army then worked as a wagon driver in Teesdale, where he lived for the rest of his life.

‘‘The story of what happened to him has always been my inspiration.’’ Robert, a former Teesdale School pupil, who worked for Glaxo in the town before joining up, is studying to become a small ships navigator.