Veteran visiting Normandy on D-Day anniversary to ‘pay respects to shipmates’

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

A Royal Navy veteran plans to visit Normandy on the 80th anniversary of D-Day to pay his respects to his shipmates.

Alec Penstone was a submarine detector on HMS Campania and was stopping U-boats on D-Day.

The 99-year-old said: “I wasn’t in the actual landing, I was there but we were protecting the convoy going across.”

His job was to stop any U-boats attacking the invasion force going across to France.

“I think we succeeded in doing that,” Mr Penstone added.

After the war finished, Mr Penstone said he was kept at sea searching for three rogue German U-boats which had not surrendered.

He added: “We knew they were in northern waters, but they hadn’t surrendered, and we had to find them.

“We searched all in and out all the outlying islands of Norway, and we finally discovered they’d scuttled their boats in a remote part of Norway, made their way back through Norway if they ever got that far back to Germany rather than become prisoners of war.”

Mr Penstone said after that he was sent back to the barracks.

Asked if he was proud of the work he did during and after D-Day, he said: “Certainly, no doubt about it.

“I’m very pleased I’m still alive to tell it.”

Mr Penstone plans to travel to Normandy with the Spirit of Normandy Trust, which he said is “the most magnificent charity that I’ve ever known”.

“My heroes are all those that went to Normandy and their gravestones are there now,” he said.

The veteran plans to go to pay his respects “to all my shipmates who lay with those white gravestones above them”.

The last time he was in Normandy he was shown the grave of his cousin who had to crash land just before midnight on June 5.

The great-grandfather, who is based in the Isle of Wight, said: “He was a real hero and there was no question about it at all.

“And last time when I was over in Normandy the wonderful people I was with actually found his grave 31 miles away and I really thank them for that.”