D-day veteran who met Ghandi dies at the age of 97
RON TOLD OF BITTER FIGHTING IN FRANCE AND LOSING FRIENDS
A DERBYSHIRE D-day veteran who saw his friends shot dead on the beaches of Normandy has died aged 97.
Edgar Ronald Minton, known as Ron to friends and family, died at his home in Breaston.
As a six-year-old, he met Mahatma Ghandi while the Indian nationalist was visiting his nephew at Nottingham University. But it was his callup to the armed forces, aged just 17, in 1942, that really defined his life.
After training to use mortars and submachine guns with the Royal Regiment, in Norfolk, he travelled to France on D-day, digging trenches three-day assault on a farmhouse on the beach before missions to cap- and chateau on the outskirts of ture German-occupied areas. Épron near the city of Caen.
He later recalled some of his har- He saw friends shot around him as rowing experiences of his time as a their infantry group of 120 men soldier. One of his accounts was of a came under fire. They suffered “heavy losses” before finally gaining control of the farm and the chateau and finding the inhabitants in the basement. Ron told of seeing soldiers “dead all around” German tanks which had been used to resist the British approach.
By the time they reached the outskirts of Caen, they had lost 90 of their 120 men. The group was amalgamated with the Oxford and Bucks Regiment, with whom Ron spent the rest of the war. He was demobbed after serving in the Netherlands, Germany and Italy.
After returning, he worked in a furniture factory in Long Eaton until his retirement. He married Ann after meeting her at a cycling club in 1951, and became a great-grandad.
He returned to visit the French family from the chateau and farm numerous times after the war, and was awarded the highest military honour that France can give to nonnationals, the Legion D’honneur, in 2016. His funeral will be held at Bramcote Crematorium, Serenity Chapel, on Monday, December 12, at 2pm.