JIM Bellows clambered on to the bridge of his LCT (landing craft tank) as it neared Normandy in readiness for the D-Day landing.

What he witnessed, he will never forget.

"The sky was filled with planes. Bombers were coming over in waves. Wherever I looked, there were warships of every shape and size. From battleships to cruisers, and from destroyers to rocket ships.

"When the guns opened up, it was like hell. You could not see what was on the coastline for smoke and dust.

"The gunfire was unbelievable, the noise deafening. It was like being in the middle of a thunderstorm.''

A signaller with the Hampshire Regiment, Jim - now 87 and a retired stevedore - had sailed from Southampton after spending two days in the New Forest in an American transit camp.

Unlike most of his comrades, he had a shrewd idea where he was heading. He had been issued with French currency.

He also had an unexpected addition to his ranks - a deserter from the Channel Islands who had joined up the day after him but didn't want to fight.

The LCT carrying two flaming tanks, an armoured bulldozer with a trailer laden with wood to make runways on the beach, crashed into a sandbar as it sped to the beach and amid the ensuing chaos, many servicemen and much of the equipment on board were doomed.

"How many lives were lost I simply don't know," he lamented.

"I saw many bodies on the beach. There were frogmen who had been trying to remove obstacles . . . in their rubber suits they just floated away.

"There were other bodies being gently turned over by the tide. Some still had their equipment on, some just with their helmets.

"It was absolutely terrible. But you had to forget them. You had your own job to do and you simply had to get on with it. That's what you were there for.

Out of the 20 wireless sets he had under his control, only two were left intact. The rest had been knocked out and were contaminated. So to improve his communications network, Jim went to the clifftop overlooking Arromanches where a radio station had suffered superficial damage in a bombing.

It was just as well he did not venture any further - just yards around the corner was a manned fieldgun Germans had captured from the French.

It was there that he witnessed a most extraordinary act of heroism where an elderly woman in an ankle length dress and shawl defied gunfire and explosions as she walked from her cottage to pay her respects to a dead liberator who had been quickly buried.

"She knelt down, put flowers on it, and said a prayer,'' said Jim. "Then she made the sign of the cross and calmly returned to her cottage, oblivious to the raging war that was going on about her.

"It brings a lump to my throat - and I'm not ashamed to admit it.''

The deserter incidentally ran off to a casualty station to complain of malaria. He was shipped back home but within days he was killed in an aerial attack on London.

A few weeks later, Jim, who lives in Calmore, was injured by friendly fire and recuperated back home. He returned to Europe for a short time before returning to England where he trained infantrymen.

Like many other survivors, he will return to Normandy in a few days for the last time.

"It is emotional every time you go back, and it will be again then. You get a lump in your throat. You don't try to show it but it's there.

"People don't realise the losses we sustained. These were people you had known for ten years. They were like brothers, rather than soldiers, and many looked up to us as a father figure - and then they were gone.''

HAMPSHIRE AT WAR: THROUGH THE EYES OF THE ECHO - A 132 GLOSSY BOOK PUBLISHED BY THE SOUTHERN DAILY ECHO IS AVAILABLE PRICED £7.50 FROM LOCAL NEWSAGENTS, BY TELEPHONING 023 8042 4722.