Greatest grandad

A D-DAY veteran solemnly salutes as he pays respects to fallen comrades who gave their lives to help liberate Europe from the Nazis, an act of bravery which echoes through the generations.

- LUCY THORNTON

Just hours earlier, 100-year-old Bernard Morgan, one of a group of heroes who made the trip to Normandy for the 80th anniversary of the historic operation, became a great-grandad again.

As his granddaughter cradled her newborn son at home, Bernard, from Crewe, said: "Seeing these graves reminds me how I'm so lucky to have escaped alive." The codebreaker was 20 on June 6, 1944, the youngest RAF sergeant among more than 75,000 British troops involved in the landings.

For a first-time visitor to Ryes cemetery near Bayeux, in northern France, the first thing that strikes you is the ages on the limestone headstones - 22, 24, 25, 23, 27, 30, 19. One just 17.

D-Day veteran Joe Mines, 99, from Hornchurch, east London, summed it up when he saw the graves yesterday for the first time. He fell silent and, staring at the headstones receding into the distance, said sadly: "There's a lot." Another, 99-year-old Alec Penstone, who served on HMS Campania as a submarine spotter, said: "History must never be forgotten. I'm very lucky.

"I thank my lucky stars I'm still here to be able to tell the tale."

Every grave in Ryes is beautifully tended, with red roses and neatly cut grass. One inscription, for 19-year-old D Chalmers from the Royal Army Service Corps, reads: "Forget him not this lad so young, his life he gave that we might live."