'VE Day is an excuse to be happy after all we went through'

SIX doughty warriors played significant roles in winning the Second World War but they remain modest about their bravery.

- Giles Sheldrick

D-Day hero Henry Rice, 99, was aboard HMS Eastway ferrying soldiers and supplies to the beaches of Normandy.

But he said: "Hero? Not me. The heroes are the brave boys we return to honour and remember.

"We must never forget their sacrifice."

Fewer than 200 British Second World War veterans are still alive.

As the nation marks VE Day — Victory in Europe — the Daily Express treated the six to a lunch at the Naval and Military Club in London. Henry, who received France’s Legion of Honour award, said: “VE Day is an excuse to be happy. After all we went through I want to be happy and I want every-one else to be happy.”

In 1944 Marie Scott was 17 and worked as a switchboard operator with the Women’s Royal Naval Service (Wrens) in the tunnels at Fort Southwick, Portsmouth, the nerve centre monitoring the D-Day invasion fleet.

When troops were talking on their radios she could hear blood-curdling sounds across the Channel.

Marie, 98, said: “I heard machine gun fire continuously. Men shouting. Men shouting orders. Men screaming. It must have been horrifying on those beaches.

“The Germans had machine gun nests that were very well concealed and they just mowed them down as they went on the beaches and I could hear all that.”

On Friday she will take her seat alongside the King and Queen at Westminster Abbey for a service of commemoration.