Last member of D-Day veterans group to scatter comrades’ ashes on final trip to Normandy

The only surviving member of a group of D-Day veterans will scatter his comrades’ ashes on his final trip to the beaches of Normandy this week.

Ken Cooke, 98, has decided that the 80th anniversary commemorations this week will be the last time he revisits Gold Beach where he landed as an 18-year-old on 6 June 1944.

He is the last member in the York Normandy Veterans group and will join a dwindling number of elderly former servicemen who are able to return to France to remember the largest ever seaborne invasion which helped turn the course of World War Two.

Mr Cooke told Sky News how he remembers being overwhelmed by the spectacle of what he saw as they approached the beach.

“I was at the side of the landing craft with my arms and elbows on the side…watching all the fireworks,” he said.

“There’s all these explosion, rockets going. All battleships firing, all the shells exploding on the beach.

“It was one big noise.”

He was part of the 7th battalion of the Green Howards that day but had never been on a boat before and had only ever visited a beach once – as an eight-year-old boy on a day trip to Skegness.

“I had never seen anything like it,” he said.

“We were cannon fodder. And no doubt about it, we were cannon fodder.

“We had had no training for D-Day. We were just thrown in.”

‘Very, very lucky’

Some 156,000 Allied troops landed on five beaches along the Normandy coast in northern France while 24,000 troops were dropped into the battle from the air.

Despite losing many of his comrades that day Ken made it up Gold Beach while dodging incoming fire from Nazi-held positions.

“We were very, very lucky,” he explained.

Mr Cooke said it was only the day after D-Day, when the enormity of what they had been through started to sink in, they began to realise how many men were missing.

A total of 4,414 Allied troops were killed on D-Day itself, while in the Battle of Normandy that followed 73,000 Allied forces lost their lives.

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The invasion paved the way for the liberation of France from Nazi occupation and led to victory in Europe for the Allies the following year.

After his war Ken Cooke returned to life in York working at the Rowntree’s confectionery factory for the most of his career.

Through the York Normandy Veterans group he became close friends with other former servicemen who had also been part of D-Day and the subsequent landings.

He is now the sole surviving member and has described it as an “honour” to take some of the ashes of his close friends Sid Metcalfe and Douglas Petty back over to Normandy this week.

Mr Petty flew 31 missions with bomber command, including raids supporting the D-Day landings.

His funeral took place on what would have been his 100th birthday on 11 January 2023.

Difficult to comprehend

The great-grandson of Trooper Sid Metcalfe, who died aged 99 on Remembrance Day in 2022, told Sky News he thought the ashes gesture was “incredible”.

George Child, 23, said his family was extremely thankful to Mr Cooke.

He said: “Having someone who has been there 80 years ago going back and being able to actually stand there spreading his ashes where he would have lost all of his friends.

“I think it is incredible really. He is doing that not just for Sid but for everyone in York Normandy Veterans.”

The student filmmaker from Leeds has pieced together his late great-grandfather’s story from landing on the beaches through to being captured as a prisoner of war in the Netherlands.

He added: “I just wouldn’t be able to comprehend what they went through and what was going through their heads.

“I don’t think a lot of people [nowadays] would have the courage to step up and fight.”

Part of his great-grandfather’s ashes are at the remembrance garden at Eden Camp, a modern history museum in North Yorkshire which used to be a WW2 prisoner of war camp.

Ken Cooke will spread the remaining ashes in a private service this week in Normandy.