Ref. 25586-50RETURN TO THE BEACH FEATURE: In this the third instalment of our Back to the Beaches series with the Normandy veterans, we follow Roy Mann who, at 79, was making his first trip back to where so many of his mates died, writes Leigh Robinson. Tomorrow Eddie Brown tells how he cannot forget the thousands of bodies which he had to recover from the beaches.

For Roy Mann it was his first time back to Normandy in 59 years, almost to the month that he was part of the greatest invasion the world had ever seen.

As he sat on a low wall on Gold Beach in deep reflection of those years gone by, he broke down, and there was no shame.

" I just lost myself for a minute," he said. "Everything came flooding back. It was as if it was just yesterday."

Roy, 79, had decided never to go back because it didn't feel right until now.

"My daughters had offered to take me back plenty of times but it wouldn't have been right. Now perhaps time is starting to run away and I grabbed the chance to go back with some old comrades.

"It's been somewhat harrowing in parts. But seeing places from the past with people who were there then made that special difference.

"All the people the young Americans we met, the grandmother who was a kiddy when D-Day was going on they all treated us like heroes. I was touched, believe me."

Roy, who lives in Stratton, will be 80 next January.

He was born in 1924 in Islington, left school at 14 and worked for a company which made and repaired cigarette machines which were installed in pubs.

"I seem to remember that a packet of ten fags was 4d (less than 2p in today's money)." His wages were 10s (50p) a week.

At 15, when war broke out, he worked in a factory which made bomb release gear for aeroplanes.

Call up came in 1943 when he was 19 and after basic training he was transferred to the Dorset Regiment for exercises for D-Day. He was in the 1st Battalion Dorset Regiment, 50th Infantry Division, 231 Brigade.

When the sixth arrived he did not go over with the first wave of troops but on the seventh he was in the thick of the action.

Wading ashore on Gold Beach with the water around his chest and his rifle held high over his head, he passed through the minefields which had been thankfully taped off by the advance troops.

He spent the next two weeks dodging bullets and tank shells as the Allies advanced and the Germans retreated.

"As number two on the Bren gun I was carrying belts of ammo and almost drowned in a shell hole which was full of water and deep mud at the bottom.

"But two blokes came along and pulled me with their rifle slings."

He watched as German tanks blitzed his colleagues, blew up British Churchill tanks and slaughtered soldiers from the Hampshire regiment.

"I was bloody terrified and I don't mind admitting it. There were bodies everywhere, men had been crushed to death by tank tracks and because of the terrain you never knew where the enemy was hiding just waiting to kill you."

Then two weeks into the operation he was wounded and got his ticket back to Blighty. His health was marked down from A1 to B1 and his war was over.

But he was discharged from the Army in 1947 and it was back to Civvy Street.

Next year is the 60th anniversary of D-Day and the Evening Advertiser, through our Reader Travel Department and Travelscope, is 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.