THEY had practiced wet landings on the Firth of Forth, with the Royal Navy firing live shells ahead of them. 

But as the ramps went down on Sword Beach at 7.15am on June 6 1944, Harry Mackrell knew this time it was for real.

Just to drive to point home the landing craft had been holed by a mine and a man was lying dead in the water.

“I later learned it was the cook,” said Harry, a former infantryman with the 5^th Battalion the King’s Liverpool Regiment.

“As I came off the ship I was underwater for a few seconds before running up the beach. I couldn’t get off that beach quick enough. 

“I was with special forces. Our job was to take up positions on the first lateral road to protect the Royal Engineers, Pioneer Corps and suchlike who were clearing the beach of mines and other obstacles.”

Harry recalled a scene of burning tanks, bodies, and exploding shells and mortars. A crashing German aircraft dived into a petrol dump creating an inferno and a dense pall of smoke. 

His first contact with the enemy came soon afterwards.

“I was attached to an anti-tank gun crew and we took up a position with the barrel of this six-pounder sticking through a hedge,” he said. “There was a branch obstructing the barrel. My sergeant ordered me to jump over the hedge and fix it. 

“I put my rifle down, vaulted over, and landed right on top of a German. He was very much alive so I whipped out my bayonet, stuck it to his throat and shouted, ‘surrender you bastard’.

“He was terrified. He said ‘me Ruski’ and it turned out he was one of the Russian conscripts. I sent him down to where the military police were waiting.” 

Harry’s group travelled slowly towards Caen. On August 10 they linked up with the 4^th Battalion of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers at Falaise. “No-one ever saw such a sight,” he said. “Bodies everywhere, dead cows and horses.”

After the War Harry stayed on in the Army for 29 years, and served in the Middle East and Far East before ending up garrisoned at Lydd on the Romney Marsh. After he left he worked on the nuclear power station and continues to live in nearby New Romney.