Legion d’Honneur for veteran 72 years after he helped liberate France
A VETERAN who took part in the D-Day Landings has received France’s highest honour, the Legion d’Honneur.
Leslie Skeet, 92, who left Ladywood to fight the Germans on the Normandy beaches all those years ago, said he was “excited” to be awarded the medal at a ceremony at Holy Trinity Catholic School in Small Heath this week while his three daughters and grandchildren looked on.
“It was 72 years ago and I’m so proud,” he said. “It is good of the French to give this award. Thank God that day went well. I don’t know where we’d be otherwise.”
Mr Skeet was just 18 when he joined the army in 1942 at the height of the Second World War.
“I was worried I’d have no mates left if I didn’t go,” he recalled.
He eventually took part in “Operation Overlord”, the codename for the co-ordinated Normandy invasion by the Allies.
Mr Skeet was a gunner despatch rider for the 532 Battery of the 191st Herts and Essex Yeomanry field regiment. The dangerous job saw him bike up and down army lines passing on top-secret messages – while trying to avoid enemy mines.
Though he said he was not frightened as he landed on Sword Beach on June 6, 1944, itself, he found the later two-month-long liberation of the French city of Caen deeply distressing.
“I had never seen anything like that – all the bombs going off. I felt sorry for the civilians and for the country,” he said.
“We had to bomb it. You had to destroy part of the country to free it.” The 300 soldiers in the regiment became “closer than brothers” and advanced across France, through Belgium and Holland right up to the German border. But Mr Skeet was devastated when the regiment was disbanded on the order of Field Marshal Montgomery because of the urgent need for infantry soldiers in November 1944. Mr Skeet later returned to civilian life, became a toolmaker in Smethwick and met his wife Heather. Together they had three daughters, seven grandchildren and nine great grandchildren.
The Legion d’Honneur was has been awarded to D-Day veterans worldwide who fought and risked their lives to liberate France from Nazi rule.