D-Day veteran Ray’s amazing story of survival
AMAZING STORY OF PARATROOPER WHO CAPTURED HEARTS OF MILLIONS
THE moment a Second World War veteran was helped out of his wheelchair by paratroopers to lay a wreath during Armistice Day captured the hearts of millions.
Ray Shuck was one of the many people across the region to pay their respects to those who laid down their lives in the First World War on Sunday.
And the 95-year-old, from Bolton, has a remarkable story to tell himself, as he risked his life serving as a paratrooper in France in the Second World War.
In fact, it’s a miracle he survived at all as just a few days after D-Day – the Allied Invasion of occupied Normandy on June 6, 1944 – he was shot in the head in Ranville by a German sniper.
The bullet put a groove in his skull, as it went straight through his tin hat.
He was left for dead, covered in blood from his gaping wound, but a Russian man living in Ranville saw his leg twitch on the battlefield and called for a doctor.
The bullet knocked him unconscious, and he slowly recovered over the course of a year, firstly at hospitals in France and then back in the UK, in Cheltenham. If the bullet hit any lower, the surgeon said, it would have been a very different outcome.
Now, he’s got a much quieter pace of life in Kearsley, with his family of two children, four grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.
Ray, who grew up in Birmingham, enlisted in the Army in 1942, when he was just 19 years old. Was he scared by the prospect? “We were fighting for England, that gave us more courage. We didn’t want Nazis in Buckingham Palace. I killed a few before they got me. I don’t know how I did what I did. It was never terrifying, I enjoyed it”, he said.
He started in the Royal Artillery, or The Gunners as its commonly known, and put his hat in the ring when there was a call-out for volunteers to become paratroopers.
He met his late wife Olwyn, a hairdresser, when he came up to Manchester for paratrooper training. He used to drop into Tatton Park in his parachute.
While he was in France fighting, Olwyn worked in a munitions factory assembling hand grenades and bombs like many of the women who were left at home during the war.
Ray was deployed to Ranville in France, and was part of the operation to take a key road bridge in Normandy – Caen Canal bridge – from the Germans on the night of June 5, the day before D-Day.
The bridge was later named Pegasus Bridge following the success of the D-Day operation.
After the war, Ray moved back to Altrincham to be with Olwyn and took up various jobs, firstly as a sheet metal worker, then a panel beater. He later worked as a mechanic, then bought a cafe, and further down the line, a camping business.
He moved the family to Walkden in the 1960s, and later to Kearsley in the 1970s, where they still live now.
But he’s never forgotten his days fighting for his country back in France, more than 70 years ago.
Every year he attends the Armistice Day memorial service, on November
11, in Bolton, to mark the date of the signed agreement between the Allies and Germany to end the fighting on the Western Front.
This year, the family headed to St Peter’s Square to mark the centenary.
And it was during the service that two young paratroopers John Price and Kieran Mcgurk helped Ray to his feet so he could salute the war dead.
Just moments before the video was taken, he had been in an ambulance, as he was cold and his heart-rate had dropped.
His daughter Lynda Raynor said: “It is something he always does, but this year it was a bit of a struggle.
“He was brought round in the ambulance. We walked around the corner and that is when it all happened.
“It wasn’t organised. [John Price and Kieran Mcgurk] were behind us and they had a wreath with them as well.
“They said to Joanne (his grandaughter), as she was going to lift him up, ‘Do you mind if we do it?’ They helped him up, I just wish he had taken his gloves off. We go every year, and have been going to Normandy with him for ten years. He didn’t start talking about it until he was in his 80s. He lost a few friends there.”
Ray said the opportunity to pay tribute to the fallen was an emotional experience.
“Laying the wreath was fantastic, but it upset me a little bit, I was on the verge of crying. It wasn’t my war they were in. But there aren’t many of us left. I wish I had met somebody from D-Day. I’m 96 this year, but I’m still here. I’m lucky with having a good family,” he said.
Kieran Mcgurk, 42, of Prestwich, a former Paratrooper who helped Ray to stand, said: “We had gone to lay a wreath for our mates who have died.
“As we were walking up we saw him. We had a chat with him, helped him up and had a good chat with him afterwards.
“He said something after like ‘silly Paratroopers,’ he has a good sense of humour and we were singing some of the Paras songs – what a guy.
“It was one of those things that you do, to show utmost respect. It was a nice feeling, he was a lovely person to speak to.”