'I did my duty... you don't let your mates down' - Tributes to Normandy veteran

Tributes have been paid following the death of a 101-year-old Normandy veteran who helped liberate France from the Nazis.

Richard Aldred, from Callington, served in the 7th Armoured Division and helped liberate Bourneville with his tank crew in 1944. He was later made a freeman of the French town in recognition of his service during World War Two.

Aldred told BBC News in 2024: "I'm not a hero. I just did my duty because you don't let your mates down."

His friend Steve Nicholls, who is president of the Camborne branch of the Royal British Legion, said: "Richard was a lovely, larger-than-life gentlemen who should be honoured and remembered."

Aldred was sent to France in 1944 as a tank driver, just shy of his 20th birthday, and recalled "pretty rough old times but I was very lucky to be in a tank crew".

He told the BBC: "Normandy had a terrible smell of death about it. It was not pleasant."

In 2024, he travelled from Callington in Cornwall to Normandy for the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings, where he met King Charles III and they shared a joke.

The team at the British Normandy Memorial played host to him on several occasions at Ver-sur-Mer and said they were "very sad" at his passing.

They added that Aldred had remembered taking cover by lying under a roadside crucifix alongside his surviving crew mates and recalled they all said a prayer that day.

Nicholls said: "It was a privilege to have known him."

The pair were put in touch through the Royal British Legion's telephone buddy system and had chatted every Friday since 2020.

"We generally chatted about both our experiences in the army and just about everything else in between," he said.

He said he took Aldred and his wife Joy to Cobbaton Military Museum in 2022, where he saw "both the type of tank he drove in Normandy and the tank he learned to drive in".

The Royal British Legion threw a party for his 100th birthday in 2024.

Nicholls added: "Richard also attended the start of a 100-mile charity walk I completed from Bodmin to Camborne along the South West Coastal Path to mark the Royal British Legion's 100-year anniversary."

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