Ref. 25586-61RETURN TO THE BEACH FEATURE: The final part of our series in which we took three war veterans Eddie Brown, 79, Roy Mann, 79, and Bill Higgs, 83 back to Normandy.

LEIGH ROBINSON reports on the memories the trip evoked.

AFTER the Longest Day there were the bodies thousands of them. They had been British, American and Canadian soldiers full of life just 24 hours earlier and now lifeless hulks.

As well as the dead on the land there were those who never actually made it to the beaches, mowed down in their landing craft, or shot in the water yards from relative safety.

But they eventually arrived at their destination, their bodies brought in by the high tide and it was one of Eddie Brown's jobs, after bringing in Sherman tanks with his landing craft, to collect them.

"I shall never ever forget it," he said.

"You can't believe just how many of them there were, line after line as far as the eye could see. They had been so full of hope the day before and now they were dead. It seems such a waste."

The bodies were badly waterlogged and therefore weighed more than twice as normal, so to handle them Eddie and his mates had to jump on them to get rid of the excess water.

"There was no other way to do it and we hated it," he said.

"And strangely what I remember is that how the uniforms, now outsize and swollen, had not burst and I thought how well they must have been made. Odd isn't it." Eddie was born in East Ham in 1924 and worked as a plumber before his war began in 1942 when he signed up and joined the navy.

He went to gunnery school in Portsmouth and on his way to America to bring back a landing craft he was taken ill with pneumonia and spent two months in a hospital in Brooklyn, New York.

He remembers recouperating with a Scottish family in Norfolk, Virginia, and he went back on a Liberty ship, the John W. Brown.

He travelled to Egypt and later joined the 12 man crew of Landing Craft 558.

"I had to cook on Wednes-days on the craft and everyone hated the food on those days."

They were sent for from Scapa Flow where they had been guarding the home shores and arrived in Southampton at the end of May ready for D-Day.

Shells and bullets filled the air as he and his mates got close to the beach with his cargo of Sherman tanks and then LCT 504 next to them hit a mine and was seriously damaged.

"Our skipper gave us the order to down doors but it was too early and the first Sherman went down like a stone.

"I still don't know if the tank crew survived but we managed to get the other boys away and scarpered back to Blighty."

They took in tow LCT 504 and made it home.

That wasn't the end of LCT 558 because Eddie and his mates made eight more trips across the channel with supplies of ammunition, equipment and men. They also brought back German prisoners for incarceration in Britain.

He is still in touch with some of his old shipmates and at the end of each month there is a meeting of the Landing Craft Association at Hilling-don.

Next year is the 60th anniversary of D-Day and here at the Evening Advertiser through our Reader Travel Department and Travelscope we are planning special trips for people who wish to go to Normandy.

If you would like to receive a brochure please contact Barbara Challis on 01793 528144 or ring the Reader Travel hotline on 01793 520468.