AT FIRST glance, the picturesque French coastal town of Arromanches in Normandy is a quiet, peaceful place; yet it holds a remarkable history.  

Above its beaches where children play happily building sandcastles in the summer breeze, the coastal clifftops are profoundly indented with shell-battered bunkers, the concrete and steel remnants bearing the scars of a most epic 20th-century event — D-Day, June 6 1944.

As world leaders meet for the 75th anniversary commemorations, French families will warmly fete elderly British veterans gathering at their inns, recalling the town’s longest day. 

Among them is youngest comrade Jim Radford, who was 15 years old when he partook in the largest ever amphibious military operation as part of the allies’ grand plan to liberate western Europe from nazi occupation, preceding a sequenced offensive by the Red Army in the east — three years to the day Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. 

As a young boy growing up in Hull listening closely to radio broadcasts, Radford recalls being quite aware of world events: “My father was a Labour man, I read the Daily Worker as well, so we were a socialist family. 

“Plenty of people came into the house and discussed the situation. I had a clear understanding that this was a monstrous tyranny that was threatening not just Britain — most of Europe had gone by then. 

“The only prospect other than victory was slavery, enslavement for generations probably. I was a patriotic youngster and wanted to play my part in the worldwide fight against fascism.

“I don’t recall being deterred or afraid. When you’re young, you think: ‘It’ll happen to everybody else but not me’ — you tend to think you’re charmed, somehow. 

“I would have gone to sea anyway. That was your escape route — Hull was a pretty dreary place. It was a big working-class town, but not much prospects or interest there, so anybody with any sort of get up and go wanted to leave and get to see the world. 

“That was your route to see the world — to go to sea.”

After securing a job with the Merchant Navy as a galley boy, Radford embarked on the Empire Larch, a deep-sea tug where he found himself amid the gigantic military armada sailing across the channel in the early hours of D-Day. The break of dawn revealed horrors he could not have foreseen.

“My most immediate and abiding memory was that the water was full of bodies of course. Hundreds of bodies of soldiers, with life jackets on, floating on their backs, dead men. 

“That’s a very vivid memory I’ll never lose. The beach was covered in bodies too, equipment, and burning landing craft and a few ships that were obviously hit, damaged. 

“The landing craft would go in on the beach, and the bigger ships that had dropped them and the escorts would fall back. So they were at least half a mile to a mile offshore, and they were all bombarding, lots of warships — the Rodney and the Nelson were there on Gold beach, blazing away with their 15-inch guns, behind us.”

During the invasion’s planning stages, it became evident to the allies that capture of a fully functioning port on the French coast required to sustain the advance into continental Europe would be near impossible; so their ingenious solution was to bring an artificial harbour with the fleet. 

Part of this plan involved towing decommissioned ships, to be sunk near the beachhead, providing shelter.

“We had to scuttle blockships in a big semi-circle to make a breakwater, the skeleton of the Mulberry harbour. We had to be close inshore, and we were hardly moving because we were nudging a ship in an exact position. All the ships that were laid off half a mile back were moving slowly, because a moving target is harder to hit. 

“We were closer inshore, scuttling these blockships. I don’t think the Germans realised that we were sinking ships at first — they shot at some of them, they shot at some of the blockships! But the shots were dangerously close to us.” 

Alarmed by the incoming fire, young Radford sought explanation from a fellow serviceman operating an anti-aircraft battery: “I said to the gunman: ‘What’s happening?’ — He said: ‘They’re ranging on us.’ 

“I said: ‘What do you mean, ranging on us?’ — he said: ‘Well when they range they fire a shell, spot where it lands, if it’s too high they wind down a bit, next one the other side, they adjust it, and after two or three shots a good gun layer will get it right, and the next one in the middle.’ 

“The night was no protection, because it was light as day — the bombardment was continuous, so imagine thousands of tracers in the air at the same time, you could see very clearly, so the Germans could see clearly too. 

“That’s when the splashing was very close, but fortunately the German gun layer was very incompetent, or maybe he was scared, I don’t know. 

“I’ve done a bit of gunnery when I was in the Royal Navy after that, and a good gun layer would have had us. So I’m very pleased that German was incompetent, or inexperienced, or shit scared, or whatever. That was my baptism of fire.”

After the war Radford served in the Royal Navy for seven years and devoted himself to education and study, resulting in an enlightened anti-militarist quest for peace, realising that “if all that money had been put into devising ways to avoid the need for such weapons, or a fraction of the money and effort that goes into preparing and equipping oneself for conflict was put into the job of avoiding the need for conflict, it would succeed.” 

Subsequent achievements included helping to organise the first of the famous Aldermaston marches against US air bases in Britain, the founding of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and the pro-peace civil disobedience Committee of 100, presided over by Bertrand Russell. 

This also led to Radford’s involvement in priority issues of housing. While researching the 1948 National Assistance Act, he discovered that the scheme requiring local authorities to support homeless families was not being implemented. 

A decisive moment was the campaign at the Kingshill hostel in Kent, where separation policies created “a factory for destroying homeless families.” Undeterred, Radford insisted on direct action to prevent this. 

“We formed an organisation, went into the hostel against the wishes and instructions of the staff running it, organised meetings, got the families together and persuaded them with their help, took over the hostel. 

“The homeless families took over the hostel for 12 months and ran it, and brought the husbands in — we tracked them down and brought them in. 

“It was a year-long campaign and during that campaign several people were sent to prison for daring to sleep with their wives — lots of things happened, but the outcome was absolutely successful and we succeeded in compelling the government to issue two circulars. 

“In 1965 they issued two famous circulars requiring local authorities to implement the Act, which they’d never done, to abandon the six-month rule and to admit the children and husbands and change the whole situation, throughout the country not just at Kingshill. 

“That’s a campaign I’m proud of, I’ve done a lot of campaigning since then. And the squatting movement grew out of that.”          

In recent years, Radford has become well known for his involvement in Veterans for Peace (VFP), an organisation for ex-service personnel who have renounced war. 

In 2014, he appeared at the Royal Albert Hall to sing his moving ballad The Shores of Normandy. Last month, the song’s official release entered music charts, successfully ranking above Justin Bieber’s hit I Don’t Care — and taking the number one spot.