The town’s ‘last Normandy landings’ veteran has looked back on his experiences during the Second World War as he turns 92 this week.

John Munnery was sent over as part of the Normandy landings’ reinforcements with the Coldstream Guards.

The father-of-six believes he is the last Normandy veteran still alive in Andover.

He is classed as an amputee after losing the little finger of his right hand, which he lost after his section reached Douia, France, to clear the area.

The sergeant in charge of his section called for the men to take a break beside a bridge while the other half of his section carried on over the bridge.

Two guardsman then appeared with two high-ranking German officers, but Mr Munnery’s sergeant thought it strange there were no men with the officers.

His sergeant took him to see if there were any other prisoners.

Mr Munnery said: “It was about 11 o’clock at night this was, it was a Hunter’s Moon, you could read your newspaper [by it], and [my sergeant] said ‘we’re going to give them a hand to bring the prisoners across’, and we go strolling down this road talking to one another, how they never heard us coming, I don’t know.

“And there was a German just sitting with his back to us and he turned around and shot us with his machine gun.

“He hit the sergeant on his left side and took the pistol grip off the gun in my hands.

“He was greedy, if he had concentrated on one of us, we’d have been cut in two, I was flat on my back and I managed to get up, managed to get the trigger and let it all go and ran like hell, there must have been sparks coming out the back of our boots.

“When we get behind this tank, they were all sitting there drinking cups of bloody tea!”

After waking up from his operation Mr Munnery’s sergeant, who had been hit eight times, jokingly said “I hope you don’t play the piano.” He spent the rest of the war being transferred around different British hospitals.

After the war ended he was sent to Germany to look after concentration camp victims.

He added: “I don’t want to see nothing like that again, never.”