LEONARD Culverhouse remembers how his D-Day didn't exactly go to plan as he waded ashore some 10 miles off course.

Nowadays, the 84 year old, who lives in Grange Road, St George's, Redditch, laughs when he thinks of the effort it took to get him and his 10 men ashore.

But he paints a vivid picture of the confusion of that day familiar to many who were there.

After joining the TA in 1938, he wound up as a gunner in the 150th Field Regiment, Royal Artillery with the South Notts Hussars - due to land on Sword beach at about 5pm as artillery support for the 6th Airborne Division.

By early evening on D-Day, the British beaches were mostly under control, so disembarkation should have been straightforward.

Mr Culverhouse said: "After a long wait, we eventually went on deck. HMS Warspite was behind us firing 15-inch shells at the concrete gun emplacements and a row of ships rammed into the beach, nose to tail, to form a breakwater. I remember a German Me109 being chased off by a Lightning fighter.

"The landing barges were yawing about 10ft from the ships. We'd never practised climbing down rope ladders with 50lbs of gear onto a swaying barge before."

After the hair-raising climb from ship to landing craft, they set off on the hazardous journey to shore.

But his landing craft's draught was too deep for the shallow and crowded Sword beach and couldn't find a suitable place to disembark its heavily laden men. Letting them out into deep water would have meant certain drowning.

Finally, three hours later and after numerous attempts, Mr Culverhouse waded ashore at either Juno or Gold beach - he doesn't know to this day

"The beach master was going mad shouting 'Clear the beach, clear the beach!'

He and his men were lost and without a map - but alive.

He said: "On the day, I don't actually remember being that afraid, more apprehensive about each individual step, like getting onto the landing craft."

After sleeping in what he later discovered was a tank minefield for the night, he and his team set off on the journey eastwards to join the rest of the regiment.

"We had to find our way through the Canadian battlezone. It was a case of poking your head carefully around corners."

He added: "I remember seeing the rows of dead bodies.

"But as far as we were concerned, we were non-combatants. We had rifles but no rendezvous, so we just watched the world get blown up."

Two days later, he finally made it to where he should have been at about 6pm on D-Day and so for him, the war started in earnest.

Two months later, after a number of close-shaves with shells and strafing German fighters, and almost no sleep, he was hospitalised with combat fatigue, "swollen like a balloon".

But he said: "I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

"I survived though."