Each side of us were wrecked boats...bodies face down in the sea... men half way up the beach in really peculiar, really grotesque positions, and shells landing all around'

DESPITE the success of D-Day, we must never forget its horrors.

- Lord Ashcroft

Eyewitness accounts leave us in no doubt about quite how brutal June 6, 1944, was for so many.

Marine Edward "Tommy" Treacher, of 45 Commando, gave a vivid description of just how dangerous it was arriving on one of the five Normandy beaches.

"We was [sic] 400 yards from shore and there was a crash on our boat and a shell had landed amongst all the chaps waiting to get off," he said. "They were lying there, they were wounded, they were dead as a matter of fact we had 23 casualties on our boat, 11 dead and 12 wounded.

"As we were getting closer, the matelots [seamen] were ready to push the ramps down and there was blood everywhere - there's no doubt about it, it was thick and when the Navy blokes was going to push the ramps down another shell hit us and it killed all four. As a matter of fact, they were decapitated."

An officer and three sergeants took the place of the four dead men and pushed down the ramps, which were badly twisted from the explosion. Treacher said: "God, it was a state. We had to walk through this blood on the deck and it was really running, it was terrible, and as I was going to get off the boat I spoke to one of my friends and I said, 'How are you, Jasper?' And he says, 'How am I, Tom? How am I? I reckon I have broken both my legs."" Pte Lionel Roebuck of the 2nd Battalion, East Yorkshire Regiment, described horrific scenes, too.

"Each side of us there were wrecked boats, sometimes side on, sometimes upside down. There were bodies facing face down in the sea. There were men halfway up the beach who were in really peculiar positions, legs all over the place, really grotesque positions, and there were shells landing all around us in the sea and on the beach." As thousands of men ran up the beaches, Pte William Lloyd, also from the 2nd Battalion, said "bullets just came at you like raindrops.