D-Day veteran pays his respects at Brighouse 1940’s weekend

Stan Taylor served in the East Yorkshire Regiment during the Second World War and the D-Day landings.

He was also deployed to China and Korea during his service between 1938 and 1952.

Unfortunately Mr Taylor was unable to travel to Normandy in France where world leaders and tens of thousands of people have been paying their respects.

However, a special remembrance service has taken place over the weekend in Brighouse as part of the event.

“I feel I have done my bit and paid my respects by laying the wreath with the Mayor of Calderdale,” said Mr Taylor who comes from Croydon. “Everyone has been able to reflect on what happened.

“It has been overwhelming people coming up to me asking me questions, thanking me and asking for my signature.

“Everyone who served in the armed forces and put on a uniform are heroes. I was just one of the fortunate ones to make it back.”

“The organisers have done a damn fine job putting this event together and it has brought back a lot of memories.”

British veterans, most making their final pilgrimage to Normandy to revisit the scene of their momentous invasion, took part in events to honour those who fell in the pursuit of freedom.

This week troops, now in their late 80s and 90s, returned to the beaches, cemeteries and villages of northern France through which they helped defeat Nazi tyranny.

Some 156,000 Allied troops landed on the five invasion beaches on June 6, 1944, in an operation which wartime prime minister Winston Churchill described as: ‘’Undoubtedly the most complicated and difficult that has ever taken place.’’

It marked the beginning of an 80-day campaign to liberate Normandy which involved three million troops and cost the lives of 250,000 people.