WHEN D-Day and Dunkirk veteran Corporal Jeff Haward arrived at Sword Beach on June 6, he and fellow Army machine gunners were ordered off again there was no room for their landing craft.

Jeff, of Allhallows Road, Lower Stoke, and now 84, said: "We circled around a few miles off-shore being shelled most of the day before we landed on Juno Beach. We had to deal with a radar station first of all, manned by the Luftwaffe, but having taken 120 casualties we were told to leave that and go to a more important target. We moved onto Breville where the Paras had dropped near Pegasus Bridge."

Jeff, serving in a machine gun battalion attached to the Gordon Highlanders, moved onto Escoville where he and his unit were attacked by the German's 21st Panzer Division and the 346th German Infantry Division.

"We were in action pretty rapidly. I was not glad to be there at the time but, looking back, I wouldn't have missed it for the world," he said.

Jeff joined the Territorial Army in November 1937 and became a Private in The Middlesex Regiment. He was attached to the 51st Highland Division because of his machine gun expertise.