We could've been going to Norway for all I knew!
DENNIS Gibbs of Tring has never really spoken about D-Day. Even his wife Margaret was unaware of the role he had played.

Only after almost 50 years of marriage during the 50th anniversary of D-Day did Dennis begin to open up and reveal some of his experiences.
He still prefers not to talk too much about the war and shows extreme modesty when he does.
Yet his memories of his part in Operation Overlord remain vivid. “I remember the sound of gunfire and bombs grew progressively louder as we approached the shore,” says Dennis.
“And the sea was very calm.” Unlike three days earlier on D-Day itself when the rough seas had turned many soldiers' stomachs.
“The guns from the assembled array of battleships, cruisers and destroyers was deafening as they blasted away at inland targets.”
The sky was also full: “There were fighters which soon chased off any German aircraft which dared to approach and bombers in formation on their way to bomb enemy targets.”
While this deafening din continued, Gunner Dennis Gibbs and the rest of the 51st Highland Division began to load their equipment from the main boat onto smaller landing barges, ready to go ashore.
By the time they had finished, night was falling. The Allied fighters headed for home and almost like clockwork, German bombers arrived overhead.
Dennis and his comrades endured a sleepless night as the bombs rained down on the flotilla and the guns on the assembled ships returned fire.
The aerial bombardment lasted all night.
In the early hours of the next morning the 51st Highlanders were ordered to clamber down rope ladders and board the landing craft.
Gold beach had been taken on the first day of the landings but it wasn't long before the division reached the fighting.
“It was very tense,” says Dennis, now 80. “You didn't know what you're going to come up against. We'd seen the media reports of how the invasion was going and that added to the tension as we got further inland.”
The Highlanders had seen quite a bit of action already during the war. Having been part of the North African campaign under Montgomery they had been serving in Sicily, waiting for orders to join the invasion of the Italian mainland when they were told they would be returning to England.
Dennis found himself stationed just outside Amersham, while other members of the division ended up in Berkhamsted.
This allowed Dennis to return home and visit his family who were living in Harrow at the time.
Dennis still smiles when he remembers the shock on his parents' faces when he knocked on their door one morning to pay them an unexpected visit!
Training was intense. All equipment had to be waterproofed and the regiment were constantly on manoeuvres and practising night firing.
Yet although they knew an invasion was approaching, the target remained a mystery until D-Day itself.
“We could have been going to Norway for all I knew!” says Dennis.
Dennis was part of a six-man gun crew operating a 25-pounder field gun. He would be the only member of his crew who saw out the whole of the war.
In one particularly scary incident not long after their landing in Normandy the crew were preparing to fire when there was an enormous explosion: “I found myself flat on my back outside the gun pit. ‘Where am I?' I thought to myself. There was lots of shouting and aIl remember feeling very groggy.”
A shell had exploded inside the gun barrel, splitting it right down the centre: “My friend had a bloodied face. He'd lost both his eyes. Another had lost one eye and another chap had a broken arm.”
Dennis remembers applying field dressing to the wounds and being taken in shock to the hospital: “They gave me a sleeping pill then took me back to the front line where I slept for almost 24 hours. When I woke up I had to carry straight on! I was wary of our gun from then on.”
But Dennis has some good memories too. Driving through newly-liberated French towns like Rouen being thanked by the locals is a memory he holds dear.
After the war Dennis worked at GHQ in Egypt before eventually returning home.
“It was good to be home,” he says: “But when I looked back and thought of all the pals I'd lost, it was hard to adjust.”