GORDON Prime is among the last of what is known as the Greatest Generation - which will once again be remembered this weekend with the 77th anniversary of the D-Day landings.

Gordon, a motorcycle dispatch rider, was part of the giant force that stormed the beaches at Normandy on June 6, 1944 as the Allies sought to re-take Europe from the clutches of Nazi tyranny.

Officially known as Operation Overlord the invasion is remembered as D-Day and also known, and immortalised in film, as The Longest Day.

Mr Prime was just a teenager and had long expected he would be required to serve his country in a war that had started years earlier. By June 1944 he were finally involved in the action he had spent years training for.

He now lives in Pembroke Dock, but remembers how anxious he was to join the war effort and had already joined the Home Guard, with his First World War veteran father, in a West Midlands village where he’d grown up, near Birmingham.

“We both joined and I said I was 17,” said Gordon who was actually a year younger than the minimum age for the home defence force when he volunteered shortly after war was declared in 1939.

“As soon as I became 18 I was called up. My pals had all joined different services and told me what a wonderful time they were having. I couldn’t wait to go but my mother said if I did (before I was 18) she would take my birth certificate (to the Army). “

Gordon, who’d been riding motorcycles since he was 11-years-old, hoped to be a dispatch rider in the Royal Corps of Signals but was sent to the RASC as an 18-year-old, after the standard six weeks infantry training, in 1942: “I was told not to worry as they have dispatch riders too.”

During May 1944 Gordon’s unit was confined to Tilbury Docks, in London, loading ships: “We were briefed and paid in French money and set sail that night. We came down the Thames and the next morning the German guns from Calais opened up on us but missed fortunately. When we got to the Isle of White we saw all the other ships.”

On D-Day Gordon first had to drive a three-ton truck, packed with explosives, through two or three feet of water and on to Juno Beach. As forces advanced Gordon would weave his way on his motorbike back and fore to the front line.

The realities of war were soon evident: “In the morning lots of French refugees passed us. We had these rations, including Nestle chocolate, which I didn’t like, and I gave it to these little French kids. I don’t think they’d seen chocolate before.”

By July Gordon would have to fire his revolver for the first time when his unit slept at a farm overnight: “There was an injured cow, full of maggots, lying on the ground and the farmer asked could I shoot it. I’d never shot anything before and I got my gun out but I didn’t kill it and had to try again. Eventually the farmer had to take the gun off me and shot it behind the ear, the skull was too thick. You would see horses and cows laying all over the place due to the bombing and we’d set petrol on them as there were so many maggots.”

As the army advanced France was being recaptured and old scores settled: “We stopped at one town square and there was a lot of commotion and they had got all these French girls lined up and were cutting all their hair off for collaborating with the Germans.”

Shortly before the end of the war, having reached Germany, Gordon’s friend, Bert Stinchcome died while making a regular run on his motorbike - and it was simply down to chance that Gordon hadn’t been running the errand: “I had lost the toss of a coin and had to go back to the main headquarters. It should have been me on the run that night. That was 10 days before the end of the war. I lost six good pals and five in Normandy.”

On Sunday’s 77th anniversary widower Gordon plans to lay a Poppy wreath at the Normandy stone in Milford Haven and remember those lost in France and since: “There used to be 100 of us but there’s only two left now.”

The camaraderie of Normandy veterans has always been important for 97-year-old Gordon. He formed a veterans’ group, in the Midlands, when he returned to the battle sites, for the first time, to mark the 40th anniversary, and when he left the army sought the support of those who’d endured the same experiences.

“When I first got home I think I had about three months paid leave and all my pals had come out of the services as well and we’d meet up every night and go to the pub. My mother used to say ‘why don’t you stay in?’ but you couldn’t settle.

“Looking back I think we all suffered from PTSD when I think about it. It wasn’t until I got married that I could settle down. We’d all say the same, everyone drank about eight pints a night, terrible it was.”

Gordon is not the only D-Day veteran of Pembrokeshire.

Ted Owens also bravely fought in the Second World War.

Ted is a well respected member of the community in Pembrokeshire.

He appeared on award winning TV show ‘Lest We Forget’, which followed Ted and two schoolchildren – Evan Lewis, aged ten, and his sister, Caoimhe, eight – as they travelled to France, the Netherlands and Germany to discuss Ted’s war.

Read his incredible story here.