Harry Howorth, who died in April aged 103, landed on Sword Beach with King's Shropshire Light Infantry, sent to destroy a gun battery. He would have drowned if someone hadn't pulled him out of the water: 'I was carrying too much in the way of arms to get out.'
(Image credit: Photographs by Richard Cannon)
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Richard Aldred, a tank driver in the Royal Armoured Corps, recalls: 'It was pretty bloody rough, actually, Normandy.'
(Image credit: Richard Cannon)
For oiler Thomas Cuthbert, even cooking dinner on his oil tanker was dangerous — in 2019, the late Queen perceptively called it 'a floating bomb'.
(Image credit: Richard Cannon)
George Chandler, a gunner on a torpedo boat, said: 'There's no fun in war.'
(Image credit: Richard Cannon)
Air gunner Syd Podd trained for D-Day for more than three years, flying Halifax bombers and towing gliders with 644 Squadron, and had an astonishing view of the landing craft lined up in the English Channel — 'dead straight lines both ways... just like Guards parade'.
(Image credit: Richard Cannon)
For bomb-disposal expert Raymond Grose of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, the uniform meant 'friend'. Inland, he and his fellows tried the 'lovely apples' in a cider orchard they found. 'Cor blimey, horrible things. Sour,' he said.
(Image credit: Richard Cannon)
Linguist Peggy Harding spent the hours of darkness atop a DF (direction-finding) tower, intercepting German forces' radio traffic. She was in the dark about the operation, but it was 'very obvious something was going to happen'.
(Image credit: Richard Cannon)
Serving 27ft below the waterline aboard HMS Campania — onto which this Fairey Fulmar crashed off the Isle of Arran a few days later — Alec Penstone's duty involved sweeping for mines and detecting U-Boats attacking the convoy: 'If we hadn't managed to land our troops... this world would have been a different place.'
(Image credit: Richard Cannon)
For the full stories of the 16 veterans photographed by Richard Cannon for Blind Veterans UK, click here
D-Day veterans (l to r) Marie Scott, William 'Arthur' Jones and Eric Carter.
(Image credit: Mark Williamson / Country Life)
D-Day veterans in their own words: 'A lot of men did very brave things. I simply did what I was told to do'
The surviving veterans of D-Day are well into their nineties, but many still remember the events with stark clarity. Three
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Carla Carlisle on memories of D-day
With Sam home from university Carla finds herself thinking of all the young men his age who perished in the
