PRIVATE Alan Rennells, 79, was born next to the Millers Arms pub in Canterbury, yards from where he now lives in Pound Lane.

He left St Dunstan's School aged 15, three months before war broke out, and was called up on his 18th birthday.

He had been in Canterbury when it was blitzed in 1942, so had experienced heavy bombing. Months of training around the South East coast taught him about beach landings. At the beginning of June 1944, he was stationed with his regiment, the 5th Dorset, in Hastings.

"We were on a quarter-hour notice to move, but didn't know what was coming up," he says. "We never received any actual information, though, on D-Day, we could see all the ships leaving from our base at the Queen's Hotel. There were thousands of them.

"On D2, June 8, we left on our ship from Portsmouth, but had trouble landing at Gold beach because the weather was so bad. We had to scramble down nets to the assault landing craft, then someone said: 'Sorry lads, can't get any nearer' and we had to jump into the sea. We landed straight in a shell hole, water up to our necks. From Gold beach, we went on to one village where we had to be careful of women snipers Frenchwomen who had married German SS.

"That was the only village I saw in my time in Normandy. Most of the time we were out in the open, apart from the odd farmhouse.

"I was on a Piat antitank gun that wasn't very accurate and fired bomb-shaped shells. There were two of us on each gun and they were deadly. If you didn't hold them right, they pushed you about six foot.

"I was scared. We were shelled just about every day. I was in the D Company of the 5th Dorsets, and we were on our own, although there were other companies at either side.

"We lost a lot of men. In one place, we were taken to a rest centre, but the Germans started shelling us with Moaning Minnies, which sent over 10 mortar shells at a time. You just heard a whoom and you knew you had to run.

"We lost a lot of men through shell shock. Others were killed. We saw two of our own men jump into a hole and the shell followed them in.

"I was there about two or three weeks, on the move all the time. Each set of men would dig trenches at night for others to move into by day.

"We had Bren guns, light machine guns, and our single Piat. Each man carried two smoke bombs, two mortar bombs and two bandoliers of ammunition 100 rounds in total.

"We were just outside Caen when it was bombed. That burned for three days. I got as far as Hill 112. I started the first assault, but got wounded.

"Someone said to me 'Look behind.' I turned round and got hit in the stomach by shrapnel from a mortar bomb. I managed to stumble to a hedge.

"I was holding my stomach in and clutching my knee when the Germans arrived and mortar-bombed us again. I took a bullet that went under the kneecap, through the other side and out my hand that was clutching it. When you got wounded you put your bayonet on the end of your rifle and stuck it in the ground, so the padre would spot it and come and find you.

"They laid me across the top of a Bren gun carrier to get to the ambulance and I was taken to Bayeux hospital. I didn't get morphine until they put a mask on my face in hospital, which sent me to sleep.

"The injury had burst my bowels. I was on a short-circuit, or colostomy bag, for three months, was given five shots of penicillin a day and 40 stitches to the wound. They brought me back home to England by ship, then to Scotland by train. My parents were called up twice, because they thought I was a goner. It was six months before I came out of hospital, and two years before I was allowed to work again. But that was the end of the war for me."

n About 2,500 Allied soldiers died on D-day, and 8,000 were wounded. More than 150,000 soldiers, sailors and airmen died in the ensuing Normandy campaign. The invasion saw some of the most savage fighting of the Second World War. Victory came at a high price.