West Yorkshire veterans make D-Day anniversary trip to Normandy
A ship set sail from Portsmouth on Tuesday morning (June 04) ahead of the 80th anniversary on Thursday (June 06)
Veterans from West Yorkshire are among dozens returning to Normandy to mark the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings.
They boarded the Brittany Ferries ship Mont St Michel in Portsmouth on Tuesday morning (June 04), many in good spirits, though one was seen teary-eyed.
The ship was accompanied by Royal Navy patrol vessels Trumpeter, Medusa and Basher as well as HMS Cattistock and the Training Ship Royalist, with tugs spraying water as it travelled out of Portsmouth Harbour.
Several small boats and yachts also waited outside the harbour to see the ferry off on its journey to Caen.
The Jedburgh Pipe Band played the ferry out of the harbour and a Royal Air Force flypast circled low overhead.
Crowds waving Union and D-Day flags gathered on the Round Tower and harbour walls in Old Portsmouth and cheered and clapped as the ferry passed, with the veterans and families smiling and waving back from the ship's decks.
One of them, Harry Birdsall, 98, from Wakefield, was seen dabbing his eyes.
Jack Mortimer, 100, from Leeds, who landed on Sword Beach, said: "When I go back there, I cry. I saw bodies being brought off that beach."
As the ferry headed out into the Solent, an RAF A400 aircraft flew past to honour the veterans.
Mark Atkinson, the RBL's director general, said it was a "momentous occasion".
He went on: "The veterans are remarkably sprightly, they're up and about and engaged.
"There were a lot of mixed emotions as you'd imagine but a lot of people are really excited to be going back.
"It's an opportunity for them to pay their respects and remember the fallen."