Hero of D-Day who witnessed horrors of battle at close quarters
A SOLIHULL war hero who took part in the D-Day landings has died at the age of 95 following a short illness.
Former Birmingham policeman Gordon Hirons, of Lyndon Road, was a regular visitor to the Normandy beaches and made numerous pilgrimages to the scene of the desperate fighting that heralded the end of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany.
Interviewed two years ago, Mr Hirons had tears in his eyes as he recalled the horrors of June 6, 1944.
“It was the noise when we landed at Arromanches beach – and the smell of blood and hand grenades,” he said.
Mr Hirons was just 23 when he took part in the amphibious landings driving a DUKW – or ducks as they were affectionately known – during the D-Day assault at Gold Beach in Normandy.
It was a day that would see Allied casualties of at least 10,000, with 4,414 confirmed dead.
Since that fateful year, he made more than 30 trips to Normandy, latterly with second wife Linda, in order to honour his fallen comrades.
Mr Hirons said: “I joined The Royal Warwickshire Regiment on September 4, 1939, when I was 18. I had been learning to be a handicrafts teacher at Central School of Art in Birmingham.
“When the war started it was a bit of a novelty – we thought it would last six months.”
The great-grandfather was soon selected to join the Intelligence Corps but was struck down with pleurisy and hospitalised for months.
The damage to his lungs meant he could not join the unit.
“It saved my life – if I’d been dropped over Normandy as part of the Intelligence Corps, no doubt I would have been shot by German snipers.”
Recalling the first moments of the assault on Gold Beach, Mr Hirons said: “The flail tanks had gone in first to explode the mines on the beach – they cut out passageways for us.
“There was a great big café at Arromanches and the German snipers would be in the building shooting at us. Part of that café is still standing.
“I remember all the lads lying on the beach,” he added. “One lad had slipped and a tank ran over his head.
“We were just taking bodies and the wounded to the hospital ships on the first and second day.”
Of his trips to Normandy, he said: “It’s something you feel you have to do when you’ve lost your pals.”
Battlefield Memorial Tours press officer John Phillpott – who travelled with him to the France and Belgium on several occasions - paid tribute to the brave old soldier.
He said: “Gordon was an absolute one-off, a good-hearted and noble man. I always felt a kinship with him, a fellow Warwickshire lad who was always ready with a smile and a kind word. He’ll be greatly missed by all who knew him, a true English gentleman.”
Funeral details have announced. yet to be