THE scene was idyllic. At the end of a narrow, tree-lined driveway, the honey-coloured stone of the chateau was bathed in bright June sunshine.

A single figure alighted from the coach. Jim Smith from Wythenshawe hadn't passed this way for nearly 60 years; since he was a 19-year-old private in the South Lancashire Regiment, the British Army's leading assault battalion to hit Sword Beach at around 7.30 in the morning of D-Day, June 6, 1944.

Now 79, Jim has been a regular on the annual pilgrimages organised by the Stockport and District Normandy Veterans' Association, but he was retracing his steps at Le Londel for the first time since it was the scene of one of the bloodiest encounters of the British and Canadian advance on the ancient Norman city of Caen.

He'd seen his commanding officer killed on the beach, shot in the head by a sniper. "The landing was terrible, terrible. Anyone who says he wasn't frightened is a bloody liar," he says. In front of the chateau at Le Londel he lost a best mate - and 60 years haven't eased the pain.

"He was a Chinese lad, Private Ling. We shared a slit trench in the cornfield over there," he says, the memories flooding back. "My friend was on lookout in a barn above us. He was waving down to tell us there were Tiger tanks approaching and an 88mm shell took him in the chest. There was nothing left of him. It's a very sad moment for me, seeing this place again, though I've wanted to see it for years. We lost a hell of a lot of men here."

The South Lancashires (since amalgamated into the Preston-based Queen's Lancashire Regiment) were part of the 3rd Infantry Division, known as "Monty's Ironsides". Later, during Operation Market Garden in Holland, Jim was badly wounded when a bullet lodged in the base of his spine. "It kept me in hospital for a long time," he says, "and I've had to wear these special shoes ever since."

Infirmity or age, however, was no deterrent to the Stockport NVA's 50-strong party of ex-servicemen and their wives - most now in their eighties - determined to renew old friendships and pay their respects to comrades who fell during the biggest seaborne invasion in history. They've been coming since the branch was founded in 1989 and, though the celebration 60th anniversary of D-Day is likely to be the last involving heads of state, the veterans are sure to return as long as they are physically able. It means so much to them.

It's only nine miles from Sword Beach to the centre of Caen - whose capture was a day one objective - but the city did not fall until July 9, the Allies having met fierce resistance from German defenders. Controversially, on July 7, Caen was all but razed to the ground by a 450-bomber raid that killed more than 5,000 of its citizens, but the welcome it affords to veterans is warm and genuine.

In the magnificent refectory of the town hall, the veterans, proudly wearing their campaign honours, regimental berets and forage caps, were presented with special, commemorative 1944-2004 medals by the mayor of Caen, Brigitte le Brethon, and toasted with champagne. It was a very poignant moment for the Stockport NVA's vice-president, Flo Viggars from Heald Green, whose husband, Bert, was the branch's founder member.

The ex-RAF man organised the 60th anniversary tour, as he had its many predecessors, but died, aged 80, in March. Wiping away a tear, former ATS girl, Flo said: "I'm very proud to have been presented with Bert's medal in this wonderful place." For branch secretary, Percy Redfern, it was the second honour of the week. On the previous Monday, he'd been one of seven veterans presented with France's highest decoration, the Legion d'Honneur, at a service in London. "I don't know why they singled me out," said the ex-member of a Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers' recovery unit, that came ashore on Gold Beach in the afternoon of June 6 to help clear obstacles and wreckage.

After the ceremony, the veterans moved next door where, across the cloisters, the huge Abbaye aux Hommes is the last resting place of William the Conqueror. Their own conquering heroics came at a much greater cost.

Outside, gardens, bedecked with flags and commemorative banners, and the bustle of the city gave little clue that, 60 years before, it had been all but destroyed; the rubble piled so high that only the top six feet of a church spire was visible from the road cleared for advancing armour.



STOCKPORT and District NVA is one of many veterans' groups from Britain, Canada and the United States who chose to celebrate the 60th anniversary of D-Day before the event - many will come during the 80 days during which the Normandy campaign was fought - preferring to cherish their personal memories, rather than be subjected to the heavy security and regimentation surrounding the visits of 16 heads of state on Sunday.

Their journey to Caen took a gruelling 18 hours, but, as they approached the Normandy coast, they held a service aboard the ferry and cast wreaths into the Channel. Canon Vincent Whelan, of Our Lady's Church, Shaw Heath, the padre known affectionately by members as Father Vin, said: "D-Day and what came after was, perhaps, the biggest event in the veterans' lives; the turning point of the war. They've never lost that attachment to comrades who were fighting with them when they landed. Some find it very emotional when they come back. At the cemeteries, we pray for those who died and we have the last post, the dipping of the flag and the laying of a wreath. Sometimes, individual veterans will ask me to go with them to a particular grave because that was where a friend was laid to rest."

Though the Stockport group was relatively small in number, its members represented many arms of the services involved in Operation Overlord's massive scale. They tell their personal tales with a combination of sentimentality and astonishing matter-of-factness.

Jim Clegg, ex-Royal Navy, from Bramhall, returned to the beach where, 60 years ago, his ship, the heavy cruiser HMS Frobisher, lay offshore, pounding German positions as the landing craft went in.

"The first words our captain said to us were: `We're going to flatten Ouistreham'. It's the small town at the sea entrance to the Caen canal, but, at the time, I'd got no idea where it was. We stayed there from June 6, got bombed in July and torpedoed by an E-boat from long range in August.

"We were a sitting target. The bomb hit the gun deck and 12 men were killed. When the torpedo struck, the bow went up and then the feeling was like going down in a lift with two-foot stops. There was no one injured, but we lost all the ship's cables and storerooms, and there was a hole in the port side you could have driven two double decker buses through. We managed to close the watertight doors and got back to Chatham with the bows well down.

"That was my D-Day finished, and I went back to the Battle of the Atlantic. I served on a frigate and we sank a U-boat in the Irish Sea, off Anglesey. It took me 40 years to find out it was U-1041."

THE vets' excursion to the Canadian Museum at Courseulles-sur-mer, in the middle of Juno Beach, brought back special memories for Alan Henshall, from Chelford, who went ashore there with the Canadians on D+1, June 7, as radio operator in an M10 self-propelled anti-tank gun.

"We battled through Normandy, and at St Charles de Percy, site of the southernmost British war cemetery, we engaged in a fierce fight with a group of panzers. The turret of the M10 was blown off and the three lads in it were killed. The driver and I managed to get out, but he was killed by a sniper. He was taller than me, and the bullet went over my head. I crawled away and escaped." Ex-Navy man Jim McHugh, from Stockport, crossed the Channel two weeks before D-Day in a converted trawler, sweeping the sea of mines as close as four miles from the shore, but says: "We didn't know why."

John Flanagan, of the Royal Engineers, trained as a diver in recovery operations and was involved in the construction of the Mulberry harbours in London's East India Dock. "I had no idea what those huge lengths of concrete were," he said. "I thought they might be for blocks of flats."

The Mulberry harbours were one of the key contributors to the success of the invasion. The Germans believed that an Allied landing must involve the swift capture of a port, through which the fighting men could be kept supplied. In fact, the invaders took their ports with them - pre-fabricated concrete structures towed across the Channel and assembled off the Normandy beaches.

Joe Withnall, from Poynton, who served with the Black Watch, landed with the 49th Division on Gold Beach on June 10 and, after the Battle of Falaise Gap, which saw the Allies break out from Normandy, fought all the way to Germany. He's a regular visitor with his wife, Bertha, and they lay flowers on behalf of people unable to make the trip. "For a lot of soldiers, the landing was the high point of their experience. For me, it was crossing the Rhine at Nijmegen after being at Dunkirk the second time round. The tables were turned - there were 10,000 German soldiers trapped there."

THE Stockport NVA's week-long pilgrimage took them to wreath-laying services at cemeteries in St Croix-sur-Mer, Noyers Bocage and Tilly, and they paid respects to the 3,735 German dead buried at St Desir de Liseux.

As they got off the coach, they encountered, for the first time in all their visits to Normandy, two coach-loads of German veterans with their wives and families, and Father Vin staged a joint service.

Jack Williams, from Marple Bridge, ex-REME and retired director of the Manchester car dealer, says: "We had no idea they'd be there, but we spent nearly an hour with them. They were very impressed with our service, and the friendship was very genuine as we swapped stories. There was a trumpet call and a bell was tolled.

"And, as we were leaving, the German bugler played Amazing Grace."



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