D-Day veteran 'frightened, but daren’t show it'

Les Marsh said D-Day was something he would not want to ever go through again

A 99-year-old D-Day veteran has said he "felt frightened to death, but you daren’t show it".

Gunner and radio operator Les Marsh, from Halesowen in the West Midlands, went over to Normandy from Portsmouth and has since received the Legion d'Honneur for bravery.

The D-Day landings on 6 June 1944 marked the start of the campaign to free north-west Europe from the Nazis.

Mr Marsh said that at the time he "didn't fancy it at all", but looking back, while he would not want to go through that again, it was "something I wouldn't have missed".

Speaking about being scared, he said "you're frightened to show it" to friends and he thought they were the same.

"They [were] all frightened of showing one another that they were scared.

"We'd got to be scared. We knew what was happening. We knew what could happen.

"I thought: 'Somehow I'm going to get through this.'"

Troops from the UK, the US, Canada and France attacked German forces on the coast of northern France on 6 June.

D-Day was the largest military naval, air and land operation ever attempted.

It involved the simultaneous landing of tens of thousands of troops on five separate beaches in Normandy.

Mr Marsh went over to Normandy from Portsmouth

Mr Marsh said: "When we passed the Needles [on the Isle of Wight], somebody shouted out: 'Lads, the Needles, come and take a look at England, it may be the last time some of us will ever see it'."

The veteran said when he landed on Gold Beach, he "was one of the lucky ones".

He recalled driving his truck off the landing craft and being told by an officer to "get off these beaches as fast as you can."

"It was reasonably quiet. We got off the beaches unscathed really."

Les Marsh, pictured with his sons, said he thought of those who did not come back

Mr Marsh said he thanked his "lucky stars" for the "airborne troops that prepared the landings well enough for us to land on".

"As the days go on," he said, he thought "more and more of those lads that didn't come back"

"They deserve being thought of."