One of Britain’s last surviving D-Day veterans who stormed Normandy dies aged 99
One of the final surviving D-Day veterans has died at the age of 99 just weeks before the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landings, his family has announced.
Marines led the honours at the service for veteran Walter Bigland on Thursday after he sadly passed away last month. The great-grandfather, from Aintree, Merseyside, was only 19 when he landed at Sword Beach on June 6, 1944, carrying a rubber dinghy on his back, four grenades and 100 rounds of ammo.
Also wheeling a bike alongside 45 commando, Walter was one of the 133,000 troops involved in the largest seaborne invasion in history which heralded the beginning of the liberation of Western Europe. He later recalled the first thing he saw landing on the beach - a dead body and a tank landing craft set ablaze - but despite the horrors, he still stopped to help a man he spotted injured and in pain.
Walter has previously described the horrors he saw on the beach at Normandy (COPYRIGHT UNKNOWN)
His funeral was held on Thursday (Liverpool Echo)He later recalled: “I was carrying around 80lb in my rucksack. I managed to get the bike down the ramp, but I hardly rode it because the roads were just covered in debris. I have been called a hero in the past, but it’s water off a duck’s back to me.
“We were quite calm on the approach to Normandy because it just felt like another exercise. Most of us even managed to have a doze on the way.” He added: “All the men on those beaches were heroes.”
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Walter was 18 when he signed up for the Marines at the height of the war in 1942. After helping the wounded man on the beach, he said they then headed to their rendezvous. “We then fought our way towards the historic Pegasus Bridge in order to make contact with the 6th Airborne Division,” he recalled.
Royal Marines veterans make up the guard of honour at Walter's funeral (Liverpool Echo)“We were half an hour late because we had a bit of trouble on the way up, just little skirmishes with the enemy – but we apologised. We were apprehensive, but we were never afraid. You didn’t have time to be afraid, we were all in it together.”
With Allied forces finding many Normandy bridges intact, Walter left his dinghy and bike with paratroops at Pegasus Bridge and went on to face German defenders at Franceville Plage before taking up defensive positions at Amfreville. He was evacuated back to England after seven weeks after cutting his hand on an ammo crate which gave him blood poisoning.
Walter said “I was embarrassed because it didn’t seem like a proper injury to me. I wanted to go back to the unit, but because I’d had surgery they insisted.” Walter later rejoined the troops, serving in the Netherlands and later the Far East. He left the Marines in 1946, becoming a sergeant in the reserves and spending 32 years as a civil servant.
He was married to his late wife May for 55 years, during which the couple had four children. Walter died on February 16 with his funeral service taking place at the parish church of St Giles, Aintree Lane, on Thursday.
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