'I'm no hero...I just did my duty' - soldier's haunting words on D-Day anniversary

D-Day warrior Ken Hay choked back tears as he said: “I’m not a hero - I just did what was expected of me.”

The braveheart, who turns 101 next month, returns to Normandy today exactly 82 years after he answered a call of duty to help free Europe from Nazi oppression.

Ken was just 18 when he scrambled ashore from the MV Pampus. He was later captured and held as a prisoner of war.

This week he will fulfil a promise to chums who never returned home by paying his respects at the scene of their slaughter.

Emotional Ken said: “I might not have much longer left but I will continue going over for as long as I am able.

“I am not a hero, the heroes are buried in graves over there, but we had to do it for our country. It wasn’t bravery, it was just expected of us.”

After serving with the Home Guard, courageous Ken, from Upminster, landed at Courseulles-sur-Mer with the 4th Dorset Infantry Regiment.

There he witnessed unimaginable suffering and violent death before his 30-man patrol was cut off and came under attack. Nine were killed, sixteen escaped, and five, including Ken, were seized.

He was sent to Stalag Luft VIIIB and held as a prisoner of war in Poland and put to work as a slave in a coal mine.

Later Ken and 80,000 fellow PoWs were forced on a 1,000-mile death march in freezing temperatures across Czechoslovakia and Germany.

Yet he considers himself lucky.

He said: “Many did far more than me and I suppose I was lucky I got captured. I didn’t get killed or wounded. I suffered but not in the same way others did.

“It was a sense of adventure for a young man of 18 - until I started seeing bodies floating face down in the water and I realised they were dead. When you see the state some people are left - dead or alive - it all starts to hit home.

“The truth was you didn’t know whether you would make it home.”

Ken still carries the burden of what he witnessed and even fulfilling a promise to tell his story to a generation unaware of what happened on June 6, 1944, comes at a heavy cost.

Such were the horrors he saw that they still replay on a loop in his mind’s eye. His doctor prescribed him sleeping pills to help him sleep and forget.

Vividly recalling taking over from 15th (Scottish) Infantry Division at Cheux, during the British offensive to outflank Caen, Ken remembers brutal hand-to-hand combat and heavy casualties.

His unit was ordered to find rifles and Bren guns that had been left behind but he got separated and found himself alone and isolated in the dark on the German line.

He said: “I went along a hedgerow and there was a gap across a clearing. There was a Scottish patrol in the hedge. I thought they had been hammered so much they were in a daze and had gone to sleep.

“I called out - I didn’t know how close the German line was - but I got no response so I went through the hedge and across to them and I can say to you - which I can’t say to the children I speak to - only the top half of the corporal was there. The chap behind, his brain was out, and the one behind that…you just don’t know how long a tongue is until you see it.”

Gesturing to his head with tears welling in his eyes, Ken said: “You can’t tell that to children but it is still up there. It will never go.

“There’s a whole mixture of feelings and emotions in there. I talk at schools but have to censor all the horrible bits and make sure I don’t mention them.

“I used to have bad nights - I still do. I still have flashbacks and nightmares. My doctor gave me sleeping pills - I hate pills - but when I talk to people about Normandy I take a pill to make sure I knock myself out.”

Ken was inspired by his older brother Bill, who served as a Commando in Norway and France and also on D-Day, and followed him into the British Army.

He was freed by American troops and returned to the UK just before VE Day, but was unaware if his sibling had survived the war.

Ken said: “I came home on May 4, 1945, and on VE Day (May 8) we all went up to church for a service of thanksgiving and suddenly we heard footsteps and it was my brother running down from the station, running home.

"And we were just...close to each other. We didn't say anything, we were just close. The last time I saw him was under fire in a field in France.” Bill died in 1998 aged 77.

Ken met Doris in 1941 when they were both 16 and they married in 1949. They had two sons and were together for 62 years until her death in 2011.

Ken, who has four grandchildren and three great grandchildren, was awarded the Legion of Honour, France’s highest order of merit, for his heroics and received an MBE from the late Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace in 2001.

He has never forgotten those who fell and has dedicated his life to honouring those who did not return home, making the annual pilgrimage to Normandy to honour their memories.

In 2023 he became a veteran ambassador for the British Normandy Memorial which overlooks Gold Beach in Ver-sur-Mer and records the names of 22,540 soldiers who fell on June 6, 1944, and the subsequent three-month Battle of Normandy that followed.

On Saturday it is where he will stand and salute his brothers in arms who were cut down in their prime.

In the forefront of his mind will be recently-departed chums who used to accompany him to commemorations including Royal Marines veteran Jim Grant, who died in January, Stan Ford in February, and Richard Aldred and John Dennett, both of whom died in March. All were 101 and regular companions on visits to Normandy.

Ken said: "We are the lucky ones who returned as so many made the supreme sacrifice, which led to the liberation of France and the freedom of Europe. We salute them and thank them for our peace.

"We veterans still feel it is our duty to come back and remember all our friends who never came home.

"We get applauded, even though they are the ones who gave it all. We experienced it, understand it, and know that it should never happen again. This is the message that veterans try to convey to future generations so that it never happens again.”