Heroes return to D-Day beaches

VETERANS REMEMBER THEIR FALLEN COMRADES

- Giles Sheldrick

STANDING on the golden sands of Sword Beach, just as they did 79 years ago, D-Day veterans mustered for one more mission to remember their fallen brothers in arms.

The years might have advanced but nothing was going to stop some of the last Normandy invasion heroes from travelling to France to mark the most significant date of the year.

Yesterday, the dwindling but determined band of brothers returned to the exact spot where tens of thousands of soldiers desperately scrambled ashore amid a ferocious hail of antitank, mortar, machine-gun and rifle fire.

Standing on the windswept beach it was impossible to comprehend the magnitude of what unfolded at daybreak on June 6, 1944, and the courage it took to jump from landing craft, wade through the surf and crawl on to the shore as all hell broke loose.

Nearly eight decades have passed since the most audacious amphibious and airborne assault in history, a mission that claimed the lives of 22,442 British soldiers.

Less than 50 survivors of D-Day remain. But the memories of what they witnessed are undimmed by time.

Ken Hay, 97, fought back tears on the wind-battered shore, identical conditions to those 79 years as he Daily ago, told the Express: "It is all still very emotional. I can't stop thinking about the guys we left behind."

His friend Jack Quinn, 98, who lost every member of his Royal Marine unit in battle but was awarded a Croix de Guerre for an individual feat of heroism, added: "I never saw them again and we should have shared this medal.

"We were told to do a job and we did it. It fills me with great sadness."