A VIOLENT storm delayed Bill Wray and his shipmates for four days when they were due to land on the coast of Normandy.

The cargo ship left the London docks on June 13, 1944, and was supposed to land two days later but had to wait half a mile out to sea for the tempest to die down.

Bill recalled: "We started to offload into the landing craft but the storm was so bad that as you looked over the side of the ship, one minute the landing craft was 30 feet below the side and the next it was level with the ship."

Everyone was seasick which made sleeping in the hold with 500 other men not a pleasant experience.

"I didn't get out of my hammock for three days," Bill recalled.

The storm was not the only danger as shelling, gunfire and mines in the sea were constant perils.

Bill saw one ship in the convoy explode when it was blown up by a mine.

"For days you could see bodies floating," he said.

"As we came off the ship there were bodies all around us. But you couldn't do anything about it you just had to carry on."

When the storm finally abated it was time to join the action on shore but the fighting was slow at the start.

"If we took 100 yards we were lucky," he said.

As a vehicle fitter, Bill's job was to fix broken-down vehicles.

"I had to ride up and down on the column on my motorcycle and do repairs in all the slosh and gunfire. I'd be fixing one thing and dodging another," he said.

During this time the men could go days without having a cooked meal and lived on their haversack rations of corned beef and biscuits.

They slept in twos in trenches in the ground to reduce the likelihood of being captured by German troops and protect themselves from the shelling.

However, the trenches offered no protection against mortar bombs, which were responsible for many deaths.

Bill recalled: "We would cover the trenches with whatever we could and sleep when we could we could get orders to move at any time."

July saw Bill's division's biggest battle the Battle of Hill 112 outside Caen.

This was a vital strategic point as the hill was so high that whoever held it could dominate the area for miles around.

German troops defended it fiercely but after a 17-day battle Bill's division took control on July 29, 1944.

This gave them the upper hand and once Caen had been taken, the rest of France followed.

After the war Bill, now 82, found a job as a farm labourer and he and his wife Grace, 80, went to live in the village of Hammill, near Eastry.

The couple met at a dance in 1942 when Bill was stationed at Eastry and were married the following year.

In 1950 they moved to London, where Bill was born, but came to live in Goodnestone when he retired in 1987, before moving back to Eastry last year.

In the same year they also returned to Bayeux for the first time. They both went over to France for the 50th anniversary of D-Day in 1994 and will return this week to mark its 60th anniversary.

They say the people of Normandy are kind but Bill's greatest admiration is for the Dutch.

"They are a fine people," he said.