"OK. We'll go." Within hours of this simple command being uttered, an armada of sea-faring crafts began to leave English ports with thousands upon thousands of troops, many of them fresh faced boys, aboard.

Hundreds of aircraft carrying parachutists or town gliders roared across the skies.

Operation Overlord, the greatest and most ambitious military operation of the Second World War, was underway.

Through the night on June 5, 1944, and the early hours of the following day, June 6, more than 1,000 transports dropped paratroopers to secure the flanks and beach exits. Amphibious craft landed some 130,000 troops on five beaches along 50 miles of Normandy coast while the air forces controlled the skies overhead.

The British soldiers and Canadians landed on Gold, June and Sword beaches. The Americans landed on Utah and Omaha.

As the Allies went ashore, under severe fire from German troops, they took the first steps on the final road to victory in Europe.

Operation Overlord was originally planned to take place in May but difficulties in assembling landing craft forced a month-long postponement. June 5 was then fixed as the unalterable date by General Dwight Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander of the Allied forces.

As the day approached, and troops began to embark for the crossing, bad weather set in, threatening dangerous landing conditions. After a tense debate, Eisenhower decided on a 24-hour delay, requiring the recall of some ships already at sea.

The Germans, who sensed an Allied invasion was imminent, assessed that four consecutive days of good weather were needed to complete a cross-Channel assault.

So on June 5, knowing the tides would not be favourable for another month, Eisenhower announced "Ok. We'll go".

By dawn, 18,000 British and American parachutists were on the ground in Normandy. The first British troops landed at 07.25 hours on beaches code-named Gold and Sword and were followed at Juno beach by 2,400 Canadians.

By midnight, 155,000 Allied troops were ashore but 10,000 had been killed or wounded.

As the campaign continued, Allied forces continued to pour into Normandy -- by June 20 more than 500,000 soldiers had touched French soil. By September, Allied casualties were to rise to 210,000 with 37,000 dead.

On these three pages the Bury Times is pleased to mark the heroic exploits of those war-time heroes as some of the survivors tell their stories in their own words.