Solitary British D-Day veteran is seen sat in his wheelchair saluting his fallen comrades among their gravestones in moving commemoration picture
A lone D-Day veteran has been pictured saluting his fallen comrades as he sits among their gravestones in a moving image to mark 80 years since the Normandy landings.
Former codebreaker Bernard Morgan, from Crewe in Cheshire, signed up to join the war on his 18th birthday in February 1942.
At twenty years old he was the youngest RAF Sergeant who would land in Normandy and one of the first to discover that the war had ended when he deciphered a secret telex that read: ‘The German war is now over… The surrender will take effect sometime tomorrow’.
To mark the 80th anniversary of D-Day, the now 100-year-old Morgan traveled to Normandy this week with more than 30 former soldiers.
One particularly moving photo shows Mr Morgan sitting in his wheelchair and saluting the graves of his fallen comrades.
British veteran Bernard Morgan, 100, salutes at Bayeux Cemetery, on the day of commemorative events for the 80th anniversary of D-Day, in Bayeux, France
Mr Morgan, pictured on May 1, 1944, while working as an RAF codebreaker
Mr Morgan has previously visited the graves in Normandy with his daughter.
The D-Day veteran previously told MailOnline: ‘I always think about the three wireless operators I lost in Normandy. They were the guys who brought me the messages.
“One of them was 19 and two of them were 20, and when I go to Normandy I always go to their graves.”
On D-Day, Mr Morgan landed in Normandy on Gold Beach, carrying a large cipher machine used to decode orders.
Recalling his memories of that day, Mr. Morgan recounted the BBC: ‘When we landed, it was sad to see all the dead soldiers on the beach. First time I ever saw a dead person.
“Unfortunately, they jumped out of the landing craft, a different type of landing craft than ours, where the front door came down. They fell into the water, it was so deep that all the equipment they were carrying weighed them down and they drowned.”
Bernard Morgan, 100, was a code breaker during World War II who discovered that the war in Europe would end two days before the rest of the world
Mr. Morgan training at Oxford base, August 2, 1943
It was the largest invasion ever, with 156,000 Allied troops landing on the Normandy beachheads by sea and air and killing around 4,400 men.
During yesterday’s cross-Channel journey, a wreath was thrown into the sea by Harry Birdsall, 98, and Alec Penstone, 98, in memory of those who never made it to land.
In the moving display, both stood to salute the Last Post, while all the veterans sang Land Of Hope And Glory before being cheered on by the other passengers.
On Tuesday, Mr Morgan – along with three other veterans – brought some of their fondest war tributes to Buckingham Palace as they met the King and Queen. Mr Morgan brought along a still pristine pair of football boots.
When the Queen asked him what his memories of D-Day were, Mr Morgan said: ‘When we came off the tank of our landing ship, the army was standing there on the beach picking up the poor soldiers who had drowned on the first landing .’
After the war, Mr Morgan worked on the railways and at Crewe Alexandra, where he was a turnstile operator for 57 years.
