Notes

“It was a semi-moonlit night and when I landed and started to take off my harness I stumbled into a ditch and fell over a dead German soldier, so my experience of war was within seconds of landing,” he said.

“I can remember vividly his position, his sallow face and the wound in his chest.”

Major Graham began training for adult service when he was 17 and was posted to a unit in Dorset before volunteering for airborne duties in 1943.

“The briefing we had was intense in detail and the RAF had obtained photographs of the bridges we were going to blow up so we knew exactly what we had to do,” said Maj Graham.

“On June 4 we loaded up our demolition chargers on our RAF Dakotas but had to unload due to bad weather delay. Finally, early the next evening we reloaded our equipment, fitted our parachutes and took off.

“The RAF pilots, due to darkness, dropped my unit some five miles north of its planned dropping zone. After much confusion, in enemy fire, we organised ourselves into separate parties and fought our way to the bridge sites.

“My job as a corporal was to go to the bridge at Troarn, which is the major bridge in that part of the area. If that could be denied to the Germans then the landing was safe.”