A SECOND World War veteran has been awarded France’s highest military honour in recognition of his role in the Battle of Normandy.

Don Clarke, aged 93, from Ruscombe, has been awarded the Chevalier de la Legion d’honneur medal for his involvement in liberating Europe from the Nazis.

Mr Clarke, who has lived in Ruscombe all of his life and attended Whiteshill School, was conscripted into the Fifth Wiltshire Regiment at the age of 19 in 1941.

After three years of training in Dover, he joined the Normandy campaign as an infantryman on June 19, 1944 – the day his wife Laurice celebrated her 21st birthday.

He was flown back to Swindon after he was wounded by mortar bombs on July 18, 1944.

“It was the first time I had been on a plane,” said Mr Clarke.

“After we arrived in Swindon we were put on a train in the middle of the night to Hereford.

“The train took all of the wounded at night so that no-one would see.”

The war veteran stayed in hospital in Hereford for around two months where his wife would visit him.

“We would go for walks along the river,” said his wife of 72 years Laurice who worked at Standish Hospital.

“It was a worrying time when he was at war because nobody told me how he was.

“I was not told that he had been sent out to fight in Normandy.

“There was no communication and you could not even write letters that weren’t censored. I am proud of him, he is my hero.”

After he was wounded Mr Clarke returned to civilian life in Ruscombe as the war had ended.

Three of his friends were killed in the conflict by German machine gun fire – and he has since visited their graves in France.

He returned to work at the Post Office in Stroud – where he had started at the age of 14 – and continued until retirement at the age of 60.

Mr Clarke lives with his wife in Ruscombe and the couple have one child and two grandchildren.

D-Day was the largest naval, air and land operation in history and heralded the start of a long and costly campaign that would finally liberate Europe from the grip of Nazi Germany almost a year later.

Of the 156,000 Allied troops who landed in Normandy on D-Day – June 6, 1944 – records indicate that around 10,000 men were either killed, wounded, went missing in action or became prisoners of war.

French president Francois Hollande pledged to honour all British veterans who had served at D-Day when France marked the 70th anniversary of the campaign in 2014.