CHIEF Petty Officer William Wickham knew that the D-Day invasion was about to start when the Germans started firing at the ship he was on in the Straits of Dover.

He had joined a French merchant ship called the Capterain at London's East India Docks. But for a number of days the vessel had sailed to Tilbury and Southend and back as a decoy so enemy aircraft didn't realise the invading armada was forming up.

Then one day they didn't go back. Mr Wickham recalled: "We realised once we were in the Straits of Dover because they started firing at us from across the Channel.

"We had one near-miss. In our gunnery we had a chief petty officer who was rather good. He stood on the deck as a shell exploded 400 yards in front of us and another 400 yards behind us. Then one landed 200 yards in front. He said the next one should be a hit but luckily for us it wasn't."

They arrived at the Sword Beach area just off Arromanches on the afternoon of D-Day.

Mr Wickham, who was attached to Defensively Equipped Merchant Ships, said: "We were rather busy unloading supplies. DUKWs, amphibious craft the size of a bus, were running to and from the shore. We had a small landing craft and went round the ships in the anchorage, servicing them with supplies and doing general repairs."

He added: "It was rather noisy. We had a bit of rough weather and got shelled from Le Havre. It wasn't nice."

However Mr Wickham, now 83, of Fant Lane, Maidstone, is still amused by one surreal aspect of the day.

He said: "They had music playing on the ships and they always used to play one tune when the shelling got heavy: When Your Heart Goes Bumpty Bump, It's Love, Love, Love. It always used to come on at that time. I don't know why."

Despite the danger, Mr Wickham said they were too busy to be worried.

About five or six ships were brought in and sunk in a semicircle to form a sort of harbour off the coast. Mr Wickham and his team were charged with salvaging the guns.

Then the Mulberry Harbours were brought in by tugs. "It was quite a sight seeing them coming across the horizon," he recalled.

He added: "Eventually we got ashore. There was deep mud everywhere, where the tanks had churned it up.

"We stayed in Arromanches for a couple of days and then went looking for a billet. We finished up in Ouistreham where we found a barn for the first night and then a nice three-bedroom house with a pump in the garden and a very nice weeping willow tree.

"The lieutenant in charge was very good. The first day we got there he said: 'I have a special message from headquarters to read to you about looting. I shall read it to you in three days' time'. By that time we had furnished the house."

The furniture was not the only thing they managed to acquire. Items taken from a sunken supply ship included a case of coffee.

Mr Wickham said: "Jock, my opposite number, went to a bistro and said to madam, 'Do you want any coffee?' She said they hadn't had any for years and she would get the lodger to test it.

"Jock took it round and found out that the lodger was the local gendarme. He tasted it, pronounced it very good and suggested she buy it."

Despite the accommodation and occasional luxury item, they were still never far away from the enemy.

Mr Wickham said: "We were just outside Caen when they did the 1,000 bomber raid. It was reduced to a load of rubble. We stood outside the house and watched it."

D-Day was not Mr Wickham's first taste of action. He had joined the Royal Navy at Chatham in July 1940 and gone to the Middle East on HMS Medway, a submarine depot ship.

He left it rather quickly in June 1943 when it was torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine after leaving Alexandria with a couple of destroyers.

Although they managed to get one or two lifeboats out, most of the crew of about 800 had to jump. About 80 to 90 perished.