For many of them, the longest day of their lives began at 7.25am on the June 6, 75 years ago. 

At that moment, the first British soldier waded ashore on Gold Beach in Ver-sur-Mer, Normandy, taking the first steps which would lead to the downfall of Nazi Germany and the end of the Second World War. 

By the end of the day, 160,000 Allied troops had followed him across the Channel, supported by 7,000 ships and boats, and the battle for Europe was joined. 

Yesterday, the surviving comrades of that lone serviceman paused to honour the fallen heroes who never returned home at moving ceremonies on both sides of the Channel.

Prime Minister Theresa May, the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall gathered with D-Day veterans for special services of remembrance at Bayeux Cathedral and the nearby Commonwealth War Graves cemetery in northern France.

World leaders, members of the Royal Family and dignitaries stood at their shoulders as a moving memorial service got under way, but the day
was for those veterans who fought through France and whose courage still echoes down through the decades. 

The start of the day was marked with the tradition of a lone piper playing a lament on the remaining a Mulberry harbour in the town ofcalled Port Winston.

Stood atop the structure, Pipe Major Trevor Macey-Lillie, of 19th Regiment Royal Artillery (The Scottish Gunners), performed Highland Laddie as crowds gathered on the beach below him and lined the promenade, applauding his performance.

Though peace now reigns over this corner of France, veterans could not help but recall painful memories of friends they had lost and the terrible scenes they had witnessed.

Frank Baugh, 95, told how he was a signalman on a landing craft that took 200 troops from 2nd Battalion King’s Shropshire Light Infantry from Newhaven to Sword Beach.

He described how the troops landed in about 4ft of rough water under “heavy machine gun fire” at 7.25am.

The landing craft was hit and the number 2 troop space caught fire, leaving some badly injured and having to stay on the ship, but those who had been lightly injured followed their comrades, he said.

“They wanted to go with their partners and that’s what happened,” Mr Baugh said.

“My most abiding memory of that day is seeing our boys we had been talking to the minute before. They got cut down with machine gun fire. They would fall into the water, floating face down and we couldn’t get them out.

“We couldn’t help them. That is my most abiding memory and I can’t forget it.”

Operation Overlord, the military’s name for the seaborne invasion, saw British troops landing on beaches codenamed Gold and Sword, while a Canadian detachment took one codenamed Juno. US forces stormed ones dubbed Utah and Omaha. 

Brought over aboard a vast armada, soldiers were dropped from landing craft in huge numbers along the coast, stumbling from the surf to fight their way ashore. 

The first task was to build the infrastructure which would allow supplies, tanks and ammunition to be unloaded, with floating Mulberry harbours taking the strain. The combined armies established a beachhead from which the Germans were unable to dislodge them, and, within 10 days, there were half a million troops had landed.

Sid Barnes, 93, from Norfolk, served in the Royal Army Service Corps and landed on a beach by Arromanches on June 6, where one of the temporary harbours was established. 

He returns every year to the town and attends commemoration events.

This year visitors were coming up to him to shake his hand, with one man saying: “Without you and everything you and the other veterans did, we would not be here.”

Mr Barnes said: “People are coming up to us to say thank you. But I think ‘thank you for what?’

“We just did what we knew we must do. It is nice to know we are valued though.”

He was enjoying the sunshine on the promenade with other veterans including Charles Burton, 94, who came over to Normandy as part of a wave of troops on the second day, June 7, with the Royal Ulster Rifles.

Mr Burton said: “It’s nice to take part, to be here, but it’s difficult as you remember the others who died.”

The allied forces’ combined naval, air and land assault was described by the then prime minister Winston Churchill as “undoubtedly the most complicated and difficult that has ever taken place”.

It marked the beginning of an 80-day campaign to liberate Normandy, which involved three million troops and cost the lives of 250,000.

Supported by artillery fire from the sea and a vastly superior airforce, the initial attack also saw thousands of paratroopers dispatched inland to seize vital road networks and bridges.

But on the beaches there was fierce fighting as German defences had been well-prepared for an invasion. Just minutes into D-day, the first house on French soil was liberated, and the first Allied soldier of the invasion, Lt Den Brotheridge, 28, was killed, cut down by enemy machine-gun fire. 

Overall, around 4,000 British soldiers became casualties on the first day. 

Prime Minister Theresa May was joined by French President Emmanuel Macron at Ver-Sur-Mer in Normandy at a ceremony marking the creation of the British Normandy Memorial.

Funded by the Normandy Memorial Trust, the monument will list the names of all 22,442 members of the British armed forces who died in the Normandy campaign in summer 1944.

Normandy veteran and patron of The Normandy Trust, George Batts, told the crowd: “They were the soldiers of democracy.”

Seven British D-Day veterans were accompanied by four children, including Sir Winston Churchill’s great-great grandson John Churchill, to lay flowers in front of a sculpture at the memorial depicting three British soldiers storming the beaches.

The ceremony concluded with a piped lament from Trooper Kurtis Rankin of The Royal Dragoon Guards.

Veterans and their families also attended a service of remembrance at Bayeux Cathedral.

Royal Marine Robert Williams, 94, from Chelmsford later visited the nearby cemetery where many of the fallen lie buried.

Mr Williams was an 18-year-old commando in a landing craft that reached Sword Beach on D-Day.  “We landed ashore and then moved through the land,” he said.

“I went all the the way through to Germany and I didn’t get a scratch. 

“The Lord was watching over me.”

John McOwan, 98, from Peebles in the Scottish Borders, was a sergeant with the Royal Electrical Mechanical Engineers on D-Day. 

He landed on Sword Beach four days after June 6.

“This whole trip has been mind boggling. 

“I shook hands with President Macron in Portsmouth, as well as Sheridan Smith,” he said.

“The service was very emotional. The tears were running down my face because it was so touching.”

Meanwhile, in Edinburgh, veterans, many in uniform, attended a service at the French Consulate organised by armed forces charity Legion Scotland and The French Consulate General.

D-Day veteran Jack Adamson, 100, from Falkirk, said: “I lost a few pals, it’s them that should be getting the glory – if that’s the right word.

“It does not bear thinking about if you’ve not seen it.

“Commemorations like today are very important, because it lets the younger generations know what the lads went through.

“The boat we were on did not get into the shore, so they put rope ladders down the side of the ship and we climbed into the sea.

“It was alright if you were 6ft tall, but I was 5ft 5ins. You had your rifle above your head, your backpack on, you had two live grenades in each pack – it was quite a struggle to get to the beach.”

D-Day veteran Jack MacMillan, 101, from Edinburgh, who was a major in the Royal Artillery, said he would never forget that day.

He said: “You’re full of awe, first of all, of what is going on.

“Then you have moments where a shell just misses you or something and you are grateful to be still here – that it’s one that missed you.

“At the end of the day, you’re doing a job and the objective is to achieve what you set out to do.”