Photographer Robin Savage pays tribute to the British soldiers who landed on the Normandy beaches in June 1944 in a new book: “D-Day – The last of the Liberators”. For the project, the war heroes revisited and recalled the places that were forever etched in their memories.
www.lastoftheliberators.com
© Robin Savage

Albert Jenkins was a co-driver in the first tank to land on Gold Beach on D-Day. The tank was knocked out by a shell just seconds after it crawled from the surf. Jenkins survived the attack, but his commander, Lieutenant Hawley, and the driver were subsequently shot dead by a German machine gun. Jenkins poses in the bunker immediately beside the place where his tank was hit.
© Robin Savage

Nick Archdale, a member of the 7TH Parachute Battalion, was among the soldiers tasked with taking and keeping Pegasus Bridge. A counter offensive by Germans began at dawn, and Archdale was sent to the town of Le Port to bolster defences. While edging along the wall photographed here he was fired on by a German machine gun. Injured, he took cover in a neighbouring house.
© Robin Savage

Gordon Newton was in an assault glider that was supposed to support the 9TH Parachute Battalion on D-Day, but the aircraft missed its mark. Marching back to rejoin his battalion, Newton chanced upon a friend who was lying wounded in a bomb crater, and carried him to safety. He is posing on the lip of a crater like the one in which he found his friend 70 years ago.
© Robin Savage

Peter Thompson was on an amphibious cargo craft that landed on Sword beach at 10am on D-Day. Its role was to deliver vehicles, as well as ammunition for tanks; it also brought back 500 casualties from the landing back out to sea. Thompson made 20 trips between England and Normandy to reinforce the front line units.
© Robin Savage

James Corrigan was part of an infantry team entrusted with seizing inland objectives in the wake of the landing. They took defensive positions at this farm in the town of Rucqueville, and came under heavy German mortar fire. Bernard Bedouet, the son of the French farmers, risked his life to bring the British soldiers food during the three-day siege. Corrigan and Bedouet remained life-long friends.
© Robin Savage

Vera Hay was one of the first British nurses to land in Normandy, about a week after D-Day. At the Chateau de Beaussy, where she is photographed, she was part of a team that treated up to 200 wounded soldiers a day – efforts that earned her the Legion of Honour, France’s highest military decoration.
© Robin Savage