I was lucky to come through alive
THE reality of what he was about to experience really sunk in for Frederick Barnes when he boarded the cargo ship that would take him and his regiment to the French coast.

Frederick, 84, of Field Road, Hemel Hempstead, said he had a sinking feeling in his stomach when the ship, carrying more than 1,000 men, sailed along the Thames past the upturned body of a dead German airman.
“I just felt terrible when I saw him,” said Frederick, a cook with the King's Royal rifles. “He must have been shot down over London and was just floating down the river in his uniform.
“From then on we just played cards to try and take our mind off of what we were about to enter,” he added.
Frederick's ship landed in Arromanche, France, a couple of days after D-Day but he says he can't remember the exact day because, as he put it, ‘any sense of time went completely out the window'.
“I saw France and remember thinking ‘Oh my God, what are we coming into?” he said. “We climbed down nets on the side of the ship and got into boarding craft which took us onto the beach.
“I was really nervous - I didn't know what to expect,” he added.
When Frederick finally arrived on the beach it had already been cleared, but it wasn't long before he heard stories circulating about less fortunate Allied troops.
“The American troops had landed on a part of beach nearby with a cliff and I was told that the tide couldn't come in because of all the bodies on the beach,” he said.
“I felt sorry for those boys,” he added.
His regiment immediately moved in land towards Bayeaux but were forced to dig in for almost a month as German troops attempted to counter-attack.
Frederick was based in the ‘second echelon' of his regiment's position - about five miles behind the front line - and as well as cooking for his comrades was also keeping watch at dawn and dusk.
However it was his cooking rather than keeping watch that put him in the firing line just weeks into the D-Day campaign.
One morning when, just before dawn, he lit a stove to cook a breakfast of porridge but had to take quick action when he came under fire.
“Some Jerries must have seen the light from the stove and started taking shots,” he said.
“I was told to put it out quickly and from then on I only cooked breakfast once it was light,” he added.
By the end of the war Frederick had been through France, Belgium, Holland and Germany and was in Hamburg when the war finally ended.
“I was lucky in every place we went in Europe,” he said. “I guess you could say I was lucky to come through the whole thing alive.”