Wiltshire war veterans have return from France this week after the 65th anniversary of the D-Day landings, but it was a trip that so nearly didn’t happen.

The Wiltshire branch of the Normandy Veterans Association took 41 members on a six-day trip to Northern France and took part in a series of ceremonies, marches and parades.

They sailed from Portsmouth to Ouistreham on June 3 and returned in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

Branch members were forced to stand outside supermarkets with collecting tins to raise £20,000 when the Government refused to fund the trip. But in February the Government bowed to pressure and agreed to pay for both the D-Day anniversary and Far Eastern memorial ceremonies.

Bob Conway, 83, of Boundary Walk, Trowbridge, is the chairman of the Wiltshire branch of the Normandy Veterans Association. He served with the Royal Army Service Corps in France, Belgium, Holland and Germany during the Second World War and was awarded campaign medals for his service.

He said: “There shouldn’t have been a problem with the funding in the first place but they’ve said they will fund the trip now so we wait for the money because we had already paid.

“While we were in Normandy everyone wanted to talk to us and take photos - it was really wonderful.

“We’re all getting older but I expect some of us would like to go back next year but we’ll have to wait and see. Personally, I would like to take my daughters next year, but this was the last big one.”

Bert Williams, 87, of Curzon Park, Calne, is the secretary of Wiltshire branch of the Normandy Veterans Association. The former sergeant, who served as a mechanic with the Tactical Advance Command of the Royal Army Service Corps, said: “On the Thursday we went to the American beaches of Omaha and Utah. The Americans were having a big service and around ten thousand made the trip over.

“They were lots of people who had brought over their old Second World War vehicles – it looked like another invasion was taking place.”

On June 5 the veterans visited Colleville-Montgomery, where the French president Nicolas Sarkozy gave a speech to the crowd, and later that day the branch laid a wreath at Sword Beach, Ouistreham, during a ceremony for their late president, Rear Admiral Edward Gueritz, who died in January this year.

On D-Day itself the branch joined Prince Charles at the British Ceremony in Bayeux where there was a fly past by a Lancaster bomber and two Spitfires.