Fearless D-Day veterans to parachute into Normandy 75 years after first landing

TWO D-Day veterans are to parachute into Normandy — 75 years after first landing there.

Harry Read, 95, and John Hutton, 94, will take off from Duxford, Cambs, in a Dakota aircraft before making tandem jumps over Sannerville.

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The great-great-grandfather said the forthcoming descent - after which he will visit fallen comrades in cemeteries - will be tinged with sadness.

Former Royal Signaller Harry, of Bournemouth, said: “In my heart I’ll be thinking of my mates.”

Mr Read said: "I will enjoy the jump. There are very real and definite pleasures in parachuting."

"It might be a little bit tricky, but I'm willing to have a go."

"But also in my heart I will be thinking of my mates."

"I get very moved when I think about them."

"I have lived one of the most fulfilled lives that it's possible for a person to live and they haven't."

Read the remarkable stories of the returning veterans from our superb souvenir pullout

• What happened on D-Day, as told by the heroes
• Veterans share their heartbreaking tales from the D-Day Landings
• D-Day veteran remembers being told: ‘You’re the assault wave, you won’t be coming back’
• D-Day veteran remembers not caring about the German loss of life but how seeing the horses being killed really stuck with him
• Wren officer recalls how she found out her secret fiancé had been killed on Sword Beach
• One of Britain's last surviving D-Day heroes talks of liberating France with a fold-up bike and a misfiring gun
• Rod Stewart sang his hit Sailing to D-Day veterans ahead of 75th anniversary

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"I will stand in that cemetery and I will be speechless and I'll weep."

Presented with the Chevalier medal - by order of the Legion d'Honneur - for the role he played in the operation as part of the 6th Airborne Division, Mr Read remembers the flight over was so turbulent they could barely stand, adding: "It was like riding a bucking bronco."

John, of Larkfield, Kent, was in the 13th Lancs Parachute Battalion.

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