London D-Day veteran: ‘We expected the worst’

D-Day saw 156,000 Allied troops arrive in Normandy on 6 June 1944 during World War Two.

Some 4,400 Allied troops died, and about 9,000 were wounded or missing.

Mr Chafer, from Pimlico, said when he was on his way to Sword beach he remembers “it was the most amazing sight, all these boats”.

“What could we expect? The worst, I suppose, really,” he said.

He added even if people said they “don’t believe in God but then when the time comes”, “we all prayed”.

Asked what it was like to storm the beaches of Normandy, he said there was “terrible noise – banging, flashing, bullets flying around… and just a mass of soldiers running everywhere”.

Some soldiers were “calling for their mates, you’d see some of them go down and you’d have to ignore it, it was part of the war, you know, you’d see your mates die”, Mr Chafer continued, while “there were some guys who would cry for their mum – they were very scared”.

“They let these bombs go, they’d blow up halfway down, and they would scatter all these anti-personnel mines and you could hear them whirring down and you’d hope one didn’t land near you,” he said.