Greg Lewis

As time passes we have to grab every opportunity to meet veterans of World War 2. Now, even those who only came of age towards the end of the conflict – from D-Day to VE day – are at least 98 years old.

This week I went to a special event with almost a dozen veterans, including Duncan Hilling and Tony Bird (both pictured).

I’d been honoured to have met Tony several times before. He joined the Royal Navy in 1942 and served on a destroyer on convoy escort duties in the Atlantic and Mediterranean. He then trained as cadet pilot with the Fleet Air Arm in Michigan.

But the pilot training was cut short and he was posted to HMS Clematis, a corvette which provided covering fire for landing craft arriving at the D-Day beaches.

He holds the distinction of shooting down a V1 flying bomb, using one his ship’s Oerlikon guns.

Duncan was a member of an advance party which went into Hiroshima as an Army of Occupation.

He says he did not see one building which hadn’t been damaged. Railings on the ground which had been barriers for the river, had all melted.

They went into a hospital and found women, children, men lying there, unable to do anything. Skin had peeled off faces and arms. Many had been blinded by the bomb blast.

But he speaks again and again today about the kindness he and his comrades received from the Japanese civilian population.

These were just two of the remarkable veterans at the event. All witnesses to history.