THOSE involved in the Normandy landings on Tuesday June 6 1944 will never forget what they went through to liberate Europe.

Operation Overlord, or D-Day, was the single biggest military operation the world has ever seen. In the first of a three-part series commemorating the anniversary, we talk to some of the people who were there.

IT was late evening on June 5, 1944, when Royal Navy telegraph operator Frank Hopkinson set sail from Portsmouth out into the English Channel.

Despite being on board a merchant ship and leading a convoy of landing craft Frank and his comrades did not know their destination.

They were transporting French Canadian assault troops from the Le Chasseur regiment and just before 11pm were told they were heading for Juno beach.

Frank, of Knowsley Road, Wilsphire, was 19 years old and arrived off the beach at around 5am on June 6, where he attended a Holy Communion service before discharging the troops for the first attacks at 6am.

"It was unbelievable, you could hardly see the sea for ships and landing craft. There were fishing boats anything that could sail across went and the weather was beautiful at the time.

"We discharged the troops from the Le Chasseur and they went down on landing craft and finished up wading into the water. What we were seeing did not sink in at first but I can see the carnage more now than I did then.

"The Le Chasseur soldiers were very tough and they did not know what they were going into. It was a lot scarier for them than it was for us but I am very proud of them.

"The troops streamed in left, right and centre and the warships HMS Rodney and HMS Nelson started pumping shells out on Caen. We could see the big tracers going over our heads. Nelson went and Rodney came and then Rodney went and Nelson came. The bombardment was so heavy that both ships had emptied all their shells.

"After the beach was scoured we went ashore to set wireless operations. We finished up in a German pillbox and we set ourselves up in there.

"Troops were coming in all the time, a lot of them from the East Lancashire Regiment. All the German prisoners were coming through to be taken back to England, many of them with burns from the flame throwers. Some of them were terribly injured and it was not a pretty sight at all."

Frank, 79, originally from the Olive Lane area of Darwen and a former worker at Darwen Paint Mill, said: "We were young and inexperienced and did not consider any risks at all for one minute. Some of the seasoned professional soldiers felt somewhat different but we were only 19.

"But I can honestly say that I would not have liked to have missed it and I was very proud to be there. We did not think anything about it, it was our job and we had to get it done.

"What still amazes me to this day is the amount of traffic - army and navy personnel - there on the South coast and the Germans did not know anything about it.

"We were too young to be worried but we knew we were building towards an invasion somewhere but we just didn't know where."

Frank lives with his wife Betsy Jane and has two sons, nine grandchildren and a great grandchild. He was in Normandy for eight weeks until Caen had been taken and then returned to the UK.