INFANTRYMAN Eric Taylor was at one stage further forward on the front line than any other British troops in the bitter struggle which followed D-Day.

The British wanted to capture the city of Caen, seven miles inland, on the day of invasion.

But they hadn't reckoned on a vicious German defence which would hold up the advance for weeks, as infantry and armour clashed in the 'slaughterhouse' of thick hedgerows which criss-cross the region.

Mr Taylor, of Chapel Road, Astwood Bank, landed on Sword beach on the morning of June 8 at Lion-sur-Mer.

The 20-year-old private was by that time in C Company, 1st Battalion, Suffolk Regiment, his third regiment in almost as many days.

His baptism of fire came on June 28 and 29 as the regiment fought a fierce battle for the German stronghold of Chateau de la Londe, near Caen.

He recalls half his company taking up a firing position along one bank while the other half deployed on the opposite bank.

He was one of the lucky ones, as the German's opened up and killed every one of his comrades opposite. He'd made the right choice.

"That countryside was made for defensive warfare. We could only creep forward. You'd be sent on patrol day or night. There wasn't time for sleep. You just lived in the ground in slit trenches," said Mr Taylor.

"You might be crawling on all fours in no-man's-land on a patrol at night and a flare would go up. You'd just freeze and try to hide behind a blade of grass. They might have spotted you and you had a sporting chance of being shot."

Despite being in the thick of nightmarish infantry battles and under constant shellfire, his overriding memory now is witnessing the bombing of Caen by the RAF to rout the Germans on July 7.

"It was unbelievable. The ground literally shook for half an hour. You couldn't hear a thing.

"Then this thick, orange fog descended on us. I've never seen anything like it."

Weeks of shooting at German lines just yards away while under a hail of fire has left a deep impression on Mr Taylor and you get the feeling he witnessed a lot more than he cares to tell.

But he stresses his story is no different to any other infantryman in that area during those bloody summer months.

Mr Taylor's war finally came to an end less than two months after he landed. A shell almost killed him.

Unbelievably, he suffered no shrapnel wounds but woke up in a hospital in Inverness suffering deep concussion. He took months to recover but was never sent back to the front, finally being demobbed in November 1946.

"At the time, I felt it was worth it because Hitler had to be stopped."

He added: "If they had ordered me back to the front, I wouldn't have hesitated - but they never did.

"But I'd seen enough."