" I volunteered in 1942, and after 3 months training was on board H.M.S. Belfast.

During D-day I was on the 4 inch gun deck, firing on Juno beach and Gold beach.

So much activity, so much noise!

We sailed from Scapaflow on June 3. We encountered some unbelievably horrid weather. Of course actually D – day was down for the June 5 but to be postponed due to the conditions.

My heart went out to those soldiers in the landing craft who were being tossed about on the rough sea.

At that time we didn’t know where we headed, but it dawned on us as we encountered the other ships. During the passage the captain came on the tannoy -which only happened for  very important announcements.

‘This is it D – day will soon be approaching.'

Of course we were naturally scared on D-day because the German  ships that we had encountered before that - we knew their capabilities, with regard to their speed and their armaments - but this time we were going into the unknown. We didn’t know if the German had improved on their rocket propelled weapons."

The D-day landings were an awesome thing. We took the convoys down through the Irish sea and I remember watching these youngsters who were scared, wet, cold, horribly seasick and who were shortly having to land on those beaches. It was terrifying for them and we really prayed for them, and our job with those guns as we came in was to pound and pound the beaches. Unless we took out the shore installations, the gun emplacements and defences, it would have been catastrophic.

My main memory of D-day was seeing those young men having to go in who’d never even been in battle before.

I was a submarine detector it was my job to listen to sonar to spot minefields, submarines, torpedo boats, coming in. I had to listen to the enemy under the sea - where as the radar looked for the enemy on the sea.

You had to rely on your ears for submarine detection -  you send the transmission out and if it hits something that’s solid it rebounds as an echo - so it goes out as a ‘ping’ and returns like a ‘whooom’ - that’s why my nicknames ‘Ping’.

You had to decide what the ping was - it could be a submarine, a minefield or even a shoal of fish.

If you've been below deck you'll have seen the hammocks - there an interesting thing about a hammock - you’ll have seen them tied up like a big sausage- there’s 2 reasons for that - one is it’s out of the way and the second thing is if your ship gets hit below the water line - and the sea rushes in - to plug it they’ll take the big scrambling net and lower it over the side and as the sea rushes in the hammock will be sucked in and plug the hole. So hammocks had 2 uses, to sleep in and to save the ship!