Top French honour for brave WWII hero John
THREE World War II veterans from Wales have received France’s highest honour in recognition of their bravery in the campaign to liberate France from the Nazis.
Peter Horn, 96, from Cwmbran; Raymond Harry Simmons, 95, from Caldicot; and John Cecil Price, 92, from Bridgend, were the last of 300 veterans in Wales awarded the Légion d’honneur over the past three years, as part of the French government’s commemoration of the end of World War II.
The medals were handed to them at a ceremony in Cardiff by the Honorary Consul of France in Wales, Marie BrousseauNavarro.
Mr Price was just 18 when he served on a Royal Navy minesweeper in the water leading to the beaches the night before the D-Day landings and for two months afterwards.
The railway worker turned wireless operator denied he was brave, despite the constant risk of the vessel being blown up by mines or attacked by German U-boats.
“I suppose I was risking my life every day but you don’t think about it too much. When the fighting started we drew back for the battleships.
“The sky went dark and it was very noisy. I remember the landing craft came in after us and a lot of the soldiers going ashore were sea sick. You had to keep going. If you stopped to think what was happening you would have had your chips.”
Mr Horn was in charge of taking 28 wagons of ammunition from the water up the beach to the front line on D-Day as a private in the Ordinance Corps of the 51st Highland Division.
He said adrenalin kept him going as all hell broke loose around him on Sword Beach.
“You had not got to pan- ic. You couldn’t be frightened. When you got to the beach they were hammering away and the adrenalin was oozing out of you. It meant you couldn’t get there quick enough.
“We landed on the beach and were shelled and attacked from above. You have never seen anything like it in your life. There was a Navy fella, the beach commander, shouting at us to come on.
“I was in charge of carrying 40 wagons to the front line. You followed a green light up and a red light going back. You just had to do it. You had a job to do.”
Mr Simmons, 95, was 24 when he joined HMS LSD 63 as a Petty Officer in the Merchant Navy in 1939 at the start of war.
By the time he took part in D-Day he had also been with Allied troops invading occupied Sicily at Salerno and Anzio.
Joined at the medal ceremony by three generations of his family, including four-year-old great-grandson Oscar Ray Courtnage, Mr Simmons said war was “b****y awful”.
“At Anzio, two big ships were sunk and there were hundreds of bodies in the water. During D-Day shells were going over the top from war ships and there was shelling from the beach, bombers and big guns. You just had to keep going.”
Presenting the men with their medals, Ms Brousseau-Navarro said: “The whole of France thanks you for your actions. You are living witness to history on our soil that shaped out identity in Britain, Wales and France.
”It is a message to Europe that we shall never forget those who fought terror and division.”
Across Britain, 5,035 veterans have been awarded the Legion of Honour since 2015, including 300 in Wales.
The French Government said it wanted to recognise the selfless acts of heroism and determination displayed by all surviving veterans of the Normandy landings and of the wider campaigns to liberate France in 1944.