Everybody, meet Ken Sturdy. The 97-year-old Welsh national was just 20 when he worked to rescue stranded soldiers surrounded by the German army in in Dunkirk, France, in1940.
As a man who lived through the events detailed in Christopher Nolan's new big-screen epic, Dunkirk, it was only right that Sturdy was one of the first to see the film. Dressed in a jacket adorned with medals, he watched the World War Two drama in his hometown of Calgary, Canada over the weekend.
The film, which stars Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, Mark Rylance, and a surprisingly talented Harry Styles, tells of the historic nine-day battle which took place between Allied Forces and German troops, and charts the British military evacuation of the French region.
It's safe to say Sturdy was impressed by what he saw, telling Global News: 'It was just like I was there again.''I was in those little boats picking them out of the water,' he said.
'I had the privilege of seeing that film tonight but I'm saddened by it because of what happened on that beach.
'Watching the movie, I could see my old friends again and a lot of them died in the war. I went on convoys after that in the North Atlantic. I had lost so many of my buddies.'
Sturdy continued: 'Don't just go to the movies for entertainment. Think about it. And when you become adults, keep thinking.
'Tonight I cried because it's never the end. It won't happen. We the human species are so intelligent and we do such astonishing things. We can fly to the moon but we still do stupid things.'
Take a look at the full clip below:
Lots of people gathered around Sturdy and shook his hand.
'At the end of the movie I ran down the stairs and he was just wiping his tears away and I was able to shake his hand and give him a proper salute,' Kelly Kwamsoos told 9 News while fighting back tears.
'I really hope that the younger generations can understand what it was like and really count their blessings. We're so lucky.'
The highest praise yet? We think so. If you needed yet another reason (aside from Styles) to see this dizzying yet spectacularly dazzling film, this is most surely it.
