CAPTAIN Leslie Gosling, now 88 and living in St Dunstan's Terrace, Canterbury, discovered he was a mean shot with a rifle while at school in Dulwich.

In the early part of the war he had joined up with the 3rd Royal Horse Artillery of the 7th Armoured Division the original and legendary Desert Rats.

As a junior officer on sentry duty in 1942 he fired the opening rounds at the approaching enemy in what was to become the Battle of El Alamein on the north coast of Egypt. Capt Gosling had seen much action, then, by the time he left Tilbury, in Essex, on an American liberty supply ship in early June 1944.

His vessel was part of a huge convoy in which the first caissons giant concrete structures used to build the Mulberry Harbours were being towed.

These revolutionary floating Mulberries were Allied harbours fuelled by a supply line running along the bed of the Channel known as PLUTO Pipe Line Under The Ocean and the advantage gained by these harbours was one of the keys to victory in Normandy.

Capt Gosling and his convoy arrived in Normandy off Gold beach on the morning of D2, June 7. "We anchored fairly close in at about 11am," he says. "The sight that unfolded was incredible not hundreds of vessels but thousands, as far as the eye could see in every direction.

"Once ashore we went into action straight away. We were in support of the 2nd 6th Queen's Regiment Battalion. Progress was very slow. The Germans had quickly reinforced the area but we managed to get forward to a village called Bricquessard.

"At Bricquessard we were heavily counter-attacked by German infantry and tanks and almost overrun. For two nights and a day we were so heavily shelled we couldn't keep a signal line open the telephone lines from the observation point to the gun position. I didn't get any sleep for that whole two whole nights and a day. We were given Benzedrine tablets to keep us awake.

"After the German attack had petered out we pushed towards the next objective, which was Caen. What we saw when we moved forward was amazing. American Flying Fortresses came low overhead. They filled the sky from one horizon to the other with their doors open and the crew sitting dangling their legs out waving to us.

"They bombed ahead of us while we fired a barrage as the infantry attacked. When we pushed on to where the Germans had been, there was any number of them lying dead. The funny thing was there were so many German bodies with absolutely no wounds. I think the fierce bombing must have used up all the oxygen in the area."

n The slow progress notably from the heavily defended Sword beach, of Operation Epsom to capture Caen was to pose considerable problems for the Allied commander, General Montgomery.

It would take six weeks of bitter fighting before Caen was finally secured for the Allied troops.