He stormed ashore on D-Day as part of the biggest invasion force the world has ever seen. But says veteran Fred Lewis, today's soldiers are as tough and dedicated. Mike Buckingham reports.

IT was more like a display of the unstoppable power of nature than any man-made event, an unleashing of such cyclonic violence that we are unlikely to see its like again and in the middle of it was Private Fred Lewis.

Even now he finds it difficult to describe the sheer momentum and accumulated terror of D-Day, the most dramatic moment in Europe's recent history.

For Newportonian Mr Lewis, now 92, signs of the gathering storm were an immensity of tanks, trucks, guns and men, British, American and Canadian, turning the whole of the South of England into a massive armed camp.

"I had joined the army in 1940 having worked for the Great Western Railway at Alexandra Dock" he recalls.

"My father had been in the South Wales Borderers on the Somme in the First World War and although I was in a reserved occupation I actually wanted to join the army and keep the tradition alive.

"I trained with the 4th Monmouthshire Regiment but was then transferred to the 2nd battalion the South Wales Borderers and it was with them I landed on Sword Beach, Normandy on D-Day itself."

The man-made storm of steel which was D-Day was preceded by a natural event which far from quickening the blood in anticipation of battle, reduced tens of thousands of soldiers to sodden, seas-sick and miserable wretchedness.

"We had set out from Shoreham on the English coast packed into our invasion craft but the weather was shocking and we were called back.

"I was sea-sick and thoroughly miserable like everybody else. Nobody had any thoughts apart from their own misery."

Throughout the build-up to D-Day Mr Lewis along with hundreds of thousands of others was confined to barracks.

General Eisenhower, the supreme Allied commander, knew that such caged power would soon dissipate and despite the likelihood of unpropitious weather gave his momentous order 'Let's go!'

It was those two words who saw Private Lewis back on his landing craft, jammed shoulder-to-shoulder with his comrades and heading for the storm of German fire.

"We scrambled ashore and made defensive positions as best as we could.

"Men were shouting and screaming and trying to regroup. We had been given ration packs with strict instructions not to open them until that evening but like a lot of other things that day, it went by the board.

"In all this confusion the Germans were firing.

"It was a hell of explosion and noise.

"After a few days we were taken out of the battle and another battalion put in our place.

"When I came back after 10 days it was to a sight the likes of which I'd never could have imagined.

"It seemed to me that the sea was black with ships, so densely packed with men, guns and equipment that you could almost have stepped from one deck to another, all escorted by an enormous naval force."

Even so, the Allied force needed luck as well as judgement if a determined German opposition was to be overcome.

Slowly, painfully, the Allies fought their way out of the beachheads and towards the heart of occupied Europe.

"We had established ourselves ashore in the face of stiff German resistance" Mr Lewis continued.

"But for me the fighting was at an end.

"A shell came whistling over and exploded and blew me up in the air.

"When I tumbled back to earth I landed on the edge of my entrenching-tool which we all carried as part of our equipment.

"The next thing I was aware of was being in hospital in Basingstoke."

By this time the war had less than a year to run.

Having previously been A1 Mr Lewis was put in the C2 fitness category making him unfit for active service.

After demobilisation he returned to the docks, married May Gilbert and allowed the war to take its place among his cornucopia of memories.

He still sees that day in June, 1944 with piercing clarity and speaks of it with vivid recollection.

It is only when I ask about the comrades-in-arms who died by his side that his voice falters.

The remembrance of them though, has been turned to practical ends.

The Royal British Legion and the honorary colonel of his old regiment have praised his work in regimental causes which have included 30 years selling poppies.

This year, as in years past, Fred Lewis will be at the ceremony in Newport which marks the anniversary of D-Day.

This year is special he says, not only because it is the 65th anniversary of the Normandy landings but also because British troops are doing their duty in Afghanistan.

There is none of what they call the 'old soldier' about Fred Lewis; none of the 'they don't make them like than any more'.

"In fact the boys out in Afghanistan are every bit as good as we were and if anything are having a tougher time" he says, and the pride in his eyes reflect the soldier of six-and-a-half decades ago.

"I am proud of what I did, and I'm proud of the lads who are doing their duty now.

"The public have been marvellous in support of the troops even if the government hasn't.

"My father was on the Somme in the Great War and I was at D-Day.

"The only difference between us and the boys out there is time.

"They are fighting for our freedoms just as we were.

"It's just that we happened to be caught up in this momentous thing that was D-Day"