96 year old veteran Percy Lewis (Image: Jonathan Buckmaster)
The men, now in their 90s, met at Southwick House, the Georgian Mansion near Portsmouth where 75 years ago next month SupremeAllied Commander Dwight D Eisenhower gave the green light for the Normandy landings. Underneath a huge map showing deployments on June 6, 1944, the old soldiers reminisced about what was to follow. They included Percy Lewis, 96, of Guildford, who served with 1st Battalion Buckinghamshire Regiment and later 1st Battalion Black Watch. He said: "When we landed it was terrible - dead bodies, blown up tanks, all burning away. But there was nothing you could do about it. We were all frightened, dead scared, but we had a job to do. Once you got over the feeling of fear you just had to get on with it." A month later Percy was wounded by mortar fire and flown back to Britain but he returned to fight his way through France, Belgium and Holland before he was captured and spent the last six months of the war in a PoW camp.
Ron Smith, 94, from near Worthing in Sussex, went in at 7.30am on Sword Beach, as a wireman on a landing craft carrying tanks.
He said: "The beach was a mist of explosions.There were several fires in the distance, and a church was alight.
"I could hear HMS Warspite firing and her shells passing about 200ft above our heads. The noise was amazing, like 20 Tube trains.
"As we went in we were hit by a mortar and one of our tanks blew up because it had explosive torpedoes alongside its tracks. It killed the men inside and I had to help lay out their bodies. Once we landed the men on
