D-Day hero Les dies at age of 98

TRIBUTES were last night paid to Royal Navy D-Day hero Les Underwood, who died at 98.

- Giles Sheldrick

Les was 18 and on a ship heading to Russia when it was diverted to Normandy to help retake Europe from the Nazis.

The ex-gunner, of Romford, Essex, was in France in June, 80 years after D-Day, with the Taxi Charity for Military Veterans, visiting Hermanville cemetery near Caen which holds the remains of 1,003 Allied troops. He said: "On D-Day all you could hear was guns going and men screaming.