On meeting a true hero

The house he lives in is an understated, semi-detached affair in a suburban part of Bristol. On walking inside, I saw nothing that suggested this man was out of the ordinary. A dining table covered with a simple linen tablecloth, photos of children and grandchildren on the walls, an old sideboard groaning under the weight of china plates and various trinkets collected over the years. But, even before I had sat down, I knew that this man was far from ordinary.

Sixty five years ago this Saturday, the hand I shook as I entered the house of this friendly octogenarian held a rifle. That rifle was trained on scores of German soldiers occupying one of the five Normandy beaches that were used during the D-Day landings on 6th June, 1944. That much I knew already. What I heard in the next ten minutes left such an impression on me I simply had to write about it.

He told me of the moment they landed. Plunging chest high in to the cold sea and wading towards certain death, as sub-machine guns 'powerful enough to cross the entire channel' fired their bullets indiscriminately at them. Some smaller soldiers struggled not to drown as the water levels rose above their heads.

Once on dry land, the mission was to dodge heavy fire, crawl through land mines, bombs and the bodies of your friends and colleagues, take out the machine gun nests responsible for this devastation, and secure the beach. All of this before your 19th birthday.

Such a scenario is almost unimaginable to most of us. We've seen the films, but there is no way we could ever begin to understand what it must have been like for these soldiers. How on earth did they deal with it?

'You have to understand' he said, 'we were very young, and you just thought 'if someone died, someone died'. If it wasn't you, you were lucky'. 'But what about now?' I thought. Looking back to that day, sixty five years on, how do you rationalise what happened? 'It was very sad to lose all those men. We have to remember them, always', was the simple answer.

Of course, D-Day was just the start for a lot of these soldiers. There was little time to take stock of the situation before they were deployed deeper in to France to continue the fight.

Having survived the landings, this man's life was very nearly snatched away by a German sniper. A sniper who had aimed for the heart, and would have hit his target had it not been for a last second movement which meant the bullet hit the shoulder. Faced with the choice of lying in the French sun and bleeding to death, or attempting to head back to base, he took an incredible chance. Defiantly plunging his bayonet in to the floor, he heaved himself to his feet, turned his back on his would be killer, and walked slowly back the way he had come, all the while waiting for the sound of gunshot that would signal his end. But it never came.

'Maybe it was payback for a life I had spared a month before. I came across a young, unarmed German soldier on a remote road. I was supposed to stick my bayonet in him, but instead I asked 'do you surrender?' He said, 'yes', so I said 'then come with me, we treat our prisoners well. You will see your mother and father again, once this war is over'.' Incredible.

He was very rational about the war in general, always stressing that the German soldiers 'were not bad guys', just more innocents caught up in a war most of them did not want to fight. For someone who has lived through it, and who lost some of his best years and best friends because of it, he was remarkably philisophical.

I got the feeling this man could have talked about his days in the war all day. And I would have happily listened. Its been said before, but its true to say that the label of 'hero' is bestowed upon individuals all too easily these days. Today, I shook the hand of a true hero.