DOING HIS DUTY

Emotional vist as Ralph, 97, reveals role he played in the Normandy landings

- SARA WALLIS

Landing with her war hero grandad on the Normandy beach where he fought almost 80 years ago, Vicky McClure is "completely floored" with emotion.

The Line of Duty and Trigger Point actress wipes away tears while 97-year-old Ralph McClure describes D-Day as "hell let loose" as he looks wistfully out to sea.

He says: "It's hard to equate it. All that water around there was absolutely full of boats and troops. It was a bit noisier than this.

For a long time, he didn't tell anyone in his family about the role he played on one of the Second World War's most important days.

"I kept it in the back of my mind," says the former Royal Navy signalman, who joined up aged 17 after quitting his butcher's job.

Vicky, who visited Normandy on the French coast for an ITV documentary, reveals her grandad's war story hit her "like a ton of bricks" because she previously had no idea what he had been through.

In the programme - Vicky McClure: My Grandad's War - she wants to find out how a lad from Nottingham found himself in the Royal Navy and at the centre of the battle on the Normandy beaches on June 6, 1944.