D-Day veteran celebrates 100th birthday

Family and friends gathered at the home of John Roberts and his wife Gillian in Whitstable, Kent, as he opened his birthday card from the King and Queen

One of the UK's few remaining D-Day veterans has been celebrating reaching his 100th birthday, which he puts down to "keeping very fit" all his life.

Family and friends gathered at the home of John Roberts and his wife Gillian in Whitstable as he opened his birthday card from the King and Queen.

The great-grandfather joined the Royal Navy at the age of 13 and served until 1978, having reached the rank of rear admiral.

On reaching the milestone birthday, he said: "I have never felt like it before, last night I couldn't believe it was going to happen and my wife and I stayed up until midnight just to make quite sure I did make it."

D-Day is a military term for the first day of an operation and is the name by which Operation Neptune is more commonly known.

On 6 June 1944, troops from the UK, the US, Canada, and France attacked German forces on the coast of northern France.

It was the largest military naval, air and land operation ever attempted and marked the start of the campaign to liberate Nazi-occupied north-west Europe.

As a 20-year-old sub-lieutenant, Mr Roberts was serving aboard the destroyer HMS Serapis at the front of the convoy arriving at Sword beach, with the ship remaining to fire on German positions along the coast for 11 days.

Mr Roberts said his memories of D-Day remained very clear, adding "we escorted the minesweepers that had to sweep the English Channel to Normandy because the Germans had laid thousands of mines".

Mr Roberts said he believed that remembering those who lost their lives in the Normandy landings, and in other wars, was important to help prevent future conflicts.

'Can you believe it?'

Explaining the secret of his long life, he said: "I grew up in North Wales and at school I was always good at games so I have never smoked in my life and I have always tried to keep very fit."

His daughter, Clare Felton, said: "It's a strange thing, this morning was the first time I stopped and thought about the fact that this is such a monumental milestone.

"My children, John's grandchildren, were saying 'This is really something, grandpa's 100, can you believe it?'"

In February, Mr Roberts' role at D-Day was honoured along with 12 other veterans of the battle who had their names added to the Normandy Memorial Wall at the D-Day Story museum in Southsea, Hampshire.