For reasons that are scarcely important, I have a different surname to my father (my mother left him, they weren’t married, I got her name. Enough said). We became closer over time, so when the chance to attend the International Sanddune Conference coincided with a small favour he asked of me, I was happy to comply. “Don’t take any risks, mind.” Was his last comment before I left. I had decided, against some advice (brother, mother, foreign office) to treat it as a road trip. So, instead of flying to Vilnius and then getting a regional flight to the airport near Klaipeda, I drove and ferried: Newcastle to Amsterdam, drive to Kiel, Kiel to Klaipeda ferry, Klaipeda to Coronian Spit ferry. It was exciting, it was fun. It was also interesting. Things were getting tense, there were noticeably few people heading east, and noticeably more military in Lithuania.

I fulfilled the little favour for my father. Whatever the documents were, it was important (he didn’t say vital, a matter of life and death – but I like to think they were) to get them to Admiral Scheer currently seconded to the Lithuanian Navy as German attache or something and important that nobody else saw them. Why they couldn’t be encrypted and wired over was because she had to see the top copies to be convinced of their veracity, I was told that later by my father; he felt he owed me an explanation for putting me at risk. I didn’t actually think he did put me at risk, I would have gone to the conference anyway.

The conference was fascinating, it must have been the last time that Russian and Western scientists attended the same event before the war. Appropriate that it wasn’t about nuclear fusion or chemicals but about managing dune systems the best way. Coronian dunes have been largely stabilised to maintain them, the dunes above Aberdeen have been managed to death to suit a golf course, the dunes at Portstewart largely do their own thing with a little protection from the National Trust. My paper went down well. I enjoyed the experience, I liked the people. It’s great to have a group interested in the same thing all together – doesn’t matter if they are Harley Davidson fans, steam enthusiasts or scientists.

One silver lining: this whole thing kicked off after the conference was over.

One day everything was a little tense, a message from Dr Andre Visolovich from the Kaliningrad Institure of Coastal Research said ‘advise you to head to the mainland as soon as... ‘. Just that. He’s a good man. I took his advice and shipped back on the small ferry. Twenty four hours later, there were queues six miles long and the ferries were working constantly. The Russians had moved over the border on the spit.

A quick bit of background. The Coronian Spit is 100Km long. It is half in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad and half in Lithuania. The Russian end is connected to the mainland, the Lithuanian end starts miles out and then gets closer and closer until it is only half a Km from Klaipeda. The prt of Klaipeda is therefor very well protected from the weather and is very commercially important. Kalinigrad was seized by the Soviets after WW2 of course (it had been East Prussia – Konigsberg – before that). There is a relatively small gap between Kaliningrad and Byelorussia allowing connection from Poland to Lithuania, Latvia and finally Estonia. The received wisdom was that any attack would sweep across Estonia so it was relatively well defended by Nato troops. In of of those Maginot Line style blind spots, nobody considered what a strategic attack might do; and in fact what they did.

Certainly there was a build up on the border with Estonia, but a clever piece of Russian reasoning put in play a surprise attack North from Byelorussia and South from Kaliningrad to cut off the three Baltic States and all the troops therein. That’s what they did. With American support for Nato at an all time low and the European powers still unable or unwilling to consider the levels of re-armament needed to scare off Putin, now was a good time to try and nibble a little off the edge of free Europe. Who would care enough to do battle? The answer, it turned out was everybody. Putin woke the sleeping giant – the German/French combination was stronger than expected and more determine than predicted; Britain signed the deal that would double the size of their airforce by buying simpler but very effective Viggens. All that was still in the future from what was happening now.

The explosion was heard forty Km away. Lithuania had considered the possibility of a backdoor attack along the split and slowly, quietly instituted its own scorched earth policy. When the Russian column started through the abandoned border crossing and trundled past Nida, the mined road was blown up. Two miles of tarmac and military hardware went up with a broad swathe of pine trees and sand. That route would be closed for some time. The other routes on the mainland were still open.

First stop: the ferry port just to confirm that no ferry company was coming in or out of Klaipeda. It was all too risky. My return ticket was meaningless.

Second stop: the airport. Naturally it was chaos, naturally there were eighty times the people wanting to fly who could get on the available planes. Governments were moving fast to arrange evacuations of their citizens (GB govt announced that its civil personnel would be evacuated but citizens who had travelled against advice would have to make their own arrangements. They stuck to that line until Lady Posonby Smyth-Wellington – related in some way to the King – was discovered to have been flown out with the ambassadorial staff. Since she was there to make use of the extensive nudist beaches in Lithuania, on holiday in other words, the government was found to have one law for the upper class and one for the plebs (me). They announced they would send a Hercules to evacuate more. Too late for me, I was indeed making other arrangements).

I must take after my father in some ways, I assessed, planned and acted like a good military man even though I’d never been in the military. Colonel Webb (my father) would have been proud. I had done some preliminary work just in case: the motorhome was always full of fresh water and fully fuelled, with two five gallon jerry cans probably illegally stored beside the bed; the refillable gas bottles for cooking were also kept full (to 80%) and there was a load of soup on board for emergencies. I made the decision, since the border to Poland was still open I would drive through Poland, Germany and The Netherlands to Ijmuiden for the ferry back. Of course thousands of others would make the same choice in time, I had to act quickly.

In one corner of the overcrowded departure hall at the airport I noticed five young women in some kind of national costumer with another older woman. What drew me to them? I think it might have been the appearance of complete and other defeat that they had. “Hello.”

“Hello? You have a plane?” the older woman, perhaps thirty five years old, said.

“No, I think all the planes are full or diverted or both. What’s your story?”

“We came for the singing exhibition. We are the Swindon Carpathian Singing Choir.” She looked at the five girls. I could see now that they ranged from perhaps fourteen to eighteen. Blond hair in tight plaits, blue-green eyes, desperation. “We were told it was safe.” So much for Foreign Office advice! “We need to get to Vilnius for our flight home. We must get away.”

I came straight to the point, no point in sugaring the pill, probably a trait I inherited from my mother. When I asked how Santa could possibly deliver all the presents, she replied ‘Good! You can see the problem. He doesn’t exist.’. When I asked what would happen if I failed my exams: ‘You get a meaningless job in a meaningless factory for low wages. Don’t fail!’ Anyway, it makes me get to the nub of an argument rather than consider people’s feelings. “I’m afraid that even if you get there, your flight will have been cancelled. Vilnius is too close to the border with Byelorussia.”

“But what -” “How will we get home?” A girl of sixteen or seventeen asked. I wasn’t able to distinguish between them at this stage, they were all pretty young women that I had to concentrate on not staring at them. Her calf eyes bored into me and I broke the first rule (‘if you are in a tight fix, don’t tie yourself down helping others until you’ve extracated yourself.’ back to my father’s training for that, he would be disappointed in my response I know).

“Well, I have a vehicle – a motorhome – it seats four normally, so some of you would have to sit on the floor. I have a fifty-fifty chance of getting to Poland I reckon, it depends on how well the invasion forces are doing. But then you have a 0 chance of getting out I think, so coming with me improves your chances. I’m leaving now, come, don’t come. Your choice.”

Their leader said (sensibly I think). “We stick together, either we all go or we all stay and hope for the best. What do you all think?” Some were in favour, some implacably against. Three were catatonic; by which I mean they could not decide anything anymore as their fear overwhelmed any rational thought.

I said: “Sensible to stay together. You are the leader, lead. You make the decision. “ She looked terrified, I could understand that. What if they came with me and a Chinook arrived that very afternoon to extract the Swindon Carpathian Singing Choir? What if they stayed and the whole airport was bombed into rubble? She hadn’t signed up for this kind of leadership decision, her role was to decide who shared a room with whom and which order to sing the songs in. Still, she was the leader.

She nodded. “Yes, we’ll go with you. Come on girls.”

Which is how I came to be driving an illegally loaded motorhome doubling as a public service vehicle.

One thing to give them credit for, they had abandoned their luggage, or almost all of it. They were able to travel light. We all piled into Geronimo (my non-PC named motorhome which I had inherited from my mother when she decided she didn’t like the rough life of living in a 7.5 metre, 3.5 tonne house on wheels – I mean we are hardly talking small leaky ridge tent here); I named it that because it felt like shouting ‘Geronimo’ when we came to down hill slopes, it really wanted to go like the proverbial bat out of hell). I set off out of the town, South and roughly West, heading for the gap between Byelorussia and Kaliningrad that was hopefully still open.