Having landed in Normandy on 12 June 1944 (D-Day plus six, in military parlance), 20-year-old 2nd lieutenant David Mylchreest fought through northern France, Belgium and Holland with the British army’s 43rd Wessex Infantry Division and liberated the key French town of Vernon, which straddles the river Seine. He believed he and his crew were the first Allied soldiers to cross the river in the initial drive towards Berlin.
Attached to the 4th Battalion Somerset Light Infantry, he took part in some of the fiercest fighting of the Normandy campaign around the towns of Argentan, Caen and Falaise, as well as the weeks-long battle for the strategically-vital Hill 112 and Mont Pincon, both near Caen. His war ended at Elst, Holland, in September 1944 when he was badly wounded by an enemy shell during the bloody Battle of Arnhem, made famous by the book and film A Bridge Too Far.
