104-year-old veteran recalls D-Day ‘bloodbath’

John Daniels from Hitchin was among thousands of troops who landed in Normandy in 1944. The invasion marked the start of the Allied campaign to liberate Nazi occupied northern Europe during the Second World War. John Daniels was a radio operator and a stretcher-bearer on Omaha Beach. He’d joined the Royal Navy before war broke out and, after three-and-a-half years in Mauritius, was re-deployed to HMS Glasgow which patrolled the Atlantic before taking part in the D-Day landings.