Thousands of people are preparing to mark the 75th anniversary of the D-day landings at commemoration events in the UK and France this week. Senior politicians and members of the royal family as well as hundreds of veterans will attend ceremonies to mark one of the main turning points of the second world war and the biggest amphibious invasion in military history.

More than 200 veterans have boarded a cruise ship, MV Boudicca, charted by the Royal British Legion, to attend the events, while others are descending en masse on Portsmouth and Normandy. Here we hear the stories of those who were there on 6 June 1944 and others involved in this week’s commemorations.

Prisoner of war: “I looked at him. He looked at me. I put my hands up”

Percy Lewis, 96, a wireless operator with No 6 Beach Group, spent most of D-day sheltering in the sand dunes off Sword beach. After landing at 11am on a small landing craft, he had to wait for the rest of his battalion to come. “Now and again there were a few shells coming over, but all the infantry and tanks had gone,” he said. The remainder of the second world war, however, would not prove so straightforward for him.

In the first week in July, while posted with 1st Battalion Black Watch, “going up towards Rouen and having not seen ‘Jerry’ [a nickname given to Germans during the war] for two days”, he and his comrades dug in. As he set up his wireless near a barn, “Jerry started mortaring, and I got shrapnel in the left ankle. It was only a flesh wound, but it was blood everywhere.”

Lewis, from Guildford, was evacuated and treated in Staffordshire before returning, this time to the Netherlands. In October 1944, while advancing through the country, his platoon found themselves at night in a small village “somewhere in the Venray area” and occupied the crossroads.

But he had to retrace his steps to retrieve some wireless equipment. “I started walking back alone, rifle over my shoulder, and the moon had just come up behind my back. I got a fair way back. Someone shouted: ‘Halt.’ I said: ‘Friend.’ Nothing. I walked a bit further. ‘Halt.’ I said: ‘Friend.’ Nothing. I took the rifle off my shoulder.

“There was a row of cottages. A door was open. I thought: ‘I’ll make for that door.’ And just as I got to the door, Jerry stepped out with his rifle on me. I looked at him. He looked at me. I put my hands up. Two German paratroopers about two doors away pushed me into the middle of the road.

“I thought: ‘They’ll start shooting in a minute.’ Nothing happened. They took me round the corner, and down into the cellar. And it was full of German paratroopers cleaning all their kit.”

With a rifle pushed into his back, he was handed over to a Panzer division. He was now a prisoner of war, and would be interned in the Stalag XI-B Fallingbostel PoW camp in Germany. It was liberated in April 1945.

“Eleven of us go to Normandy, to Arromanches, every year,” said Lewis, who has regularly given the exhortation on the seafront during the annual commemorations.

Ron Smith: ‘It’s a long time ago. This is the most I ever talk about it.’

Sunk and stranded: “I helped lay three of them out”

Ron Smith, 94, an electrician (then known as a wireman) from Rustington, West Sussex, was on landing craft tank (LCT) 947, which approached Sword beach at 7.35am on D-day. As troops disembarked, a shell hit one of the tanks on the landing craft, immobilising it and blocking the craft’s exit ramp. Torpedoes on the landing craft exploded, killing the colonel on board and three others. Smith helped wrap up the bodies, as the LCT was forced to retreat and make its way back to Portsmouth.

“I helped to lay three of them out,” he said. One was Lt Col Arthur Cocks, the first British officer killed in the landings. “He’s now celebrated in Portsmouth Cathedral with a window,” said Smith.

On their final briefings, he said: “We were told we were going to France, ‘and you won’t need a passport’.”

But nothing could really prepare for the beach landings. “I don’t reckon a winkle survived on that beach. It was just one heap of explosives – it was amazing the way the tanks went off.

“As soon as we landed, our role was to clear off quickly so the next could come in.” But after the LCT was hit, “we couldn’t land anything else”.

He spent a week in Portsmouth as the LCT was repaired, then headed back to Normandy. But the LCT hit a mine off the coast of Arromanches, near the Mulberry harbour. The crew managed to swim to a nearby merchant ship, which had been deliberately half-sunk to provide defence for the artificial harbour.

“We went up a rope, up three steps, and were over the gunnel on to the deck. Then we went to the wheelhouse. And the only thing we rescued was a huge jar of rum. And we drunk the lot,” said Smith. “There were 12 of us, and we were on there for 14 hours.

“Everyone was too busy to rescue us. We had to just stop on there. Eventually a landing craft came alongside and we were off. We were taken to an army camp, and they served us with half a loaf of bread and soup you could stand a spoon up in, and it was the best meal I’ve ever tasted. Amazing.”

Smith was then dispatched to the UK, where he recovered from his injuries in a hospital in Scotland. He was later sent to Burma.

“It’s a long time ago. This is the most I ever talk about it. I was only 19, that’s all I was,” he said.

Marie Scott: ‘We had long shifts, so we had to sleep down there as well.’ Composite: PA

Switchboard operator: “I could hear very loud, sustained gunfire”

Marie Scott, 92, a switchboard operator, volunteered for the Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS) at 17. She was posted to the labyrinthine Fort Southwick, the underground Combined Operations Underground HQ, and the nerve centre on D-day, which was run from tunnels deep in the cliffs overlooking Portsmouth. On D-day, her job was as a very high frequency (VHF) radio operator, relaying messages to and from the invasion fleet and landing troops.

“It was a series of tunnels. Quite spartan,” she said of Fort Southwick. “The tunnels were very deep. We had to go down about 350 steps to get into the tunnels and, indeed, come up 350 steps. But at 17 you could do it.

“We had long shifts, so we had to sleep down there as well. There was no natural light. There was no fresh air. So we had air conditioning and electric lights. On and off I was down there certainly for six to nine months, over D-day and after D-day,” she said.

“We knew something big was afoot because there was an armada of boats in Portsmouth harbour. That was a giveaway.

“The VHF radio was a one-way system. When you raised your lever to transmit, the recipient couldn’t make any interjections until you had finished, and said: ‘Roger and out.’ or whatever. Then they would raise their lever, and transmit their message”.

On D-day she was in direct contact with the wireless operators on the allied invasion fleet as they stormed the beaches.

“When they raised their lever, I could hear very loud, sustained gunfire. It was really so bad that you thought: ‘Oh my God. There’s a battle going on.’ You knew. You thought: ‘God, men are dying.’ The reality suddenly hit you. For a rather naive 17-year-old, I think it was terrifying. But it was a job. You got on with it.

“The messages were all in code, so you didn’t know what was being said. But you could hear the gunfire, every time the lever was lifted. I’ve never forgotten what I heard. Never.”

On the 75th anniversary, Scott, from New Malden, Surrey, will be in Normandy, travelling as a guest of the Taxi Charity, that annually takes veterans to Normandy. This year more than 30 taxis will be involved.

It will be a special moment for Scott, who after the war became a secretary, married, raised a family and then worked for Surrey county council. She has been awarded the Legion D’Honneur by the French, which will be presented by a French general at a ceremony at the Pegasus museum in Ranville.

“I’m deeply honoured, and very humbled. You feel that you can’t be deserving because men laid down their lives. We were the backroom people,” she said. “It’s overwhelming, really. And it’s going to be fantastic.

“All that really concerns me is that somebody will be available – hopefully a strapping young soldier or sailor or airman – to help me up the steps!”

Mick Jennings: ‘I can still see it. It’s like a ciné film.’

Seasickness: “Please let us get over there and get off this thing”

Mick Jennings, 93, served as an electrician on LCT 795 to carry troops of the US 531 Engineer Shore Regiment on to Utah beach on D-day. They landed under German shellfire and the craft was beached, leaving personnel open to attack. “It was a very rough crossing. I’m afraid the American troops weren’t used to being on that sort of thing [the LCT] and so a lot of them were very sick. Their only concern was: ‘Please let us get over there and get off this thing,’” he said.

He saw one LCT break up. “They weren’t really meant for that sort of sea,” said Jennings, from Emsworth, near Chichester.

“Apparently, we landed on the wrong side of the beach. It should have been further left, I think, but we didn’t know it at the time. I can still see it. It’s like a ciné film. I can see us coming in and thinking: ‘Well, there were mines on the beach.’ There were all sorts there. Luckily, the tide took us and we landed on a reasonably safe beach.”

His abiding memory was wishing “just to get back, to be honest”.

Jennings said: “I’m just one of thousands who was doing the job you were trained for. I’m nothing special.” He continued to ferry troops back and forth across the Channel during the liberation.

Victory didn’t come cheap: “I had just my achilles holding my foot on”

Bill Gladden, 95, who was in the 6th Airborne Armoured Recce Regiment, was 20 years old when he took off from a Dorset airfield on D-day in a Hamilcar glider, which dwarfed the Halifax towing it. It was the first time tanks had been flown into a battlefield, and he was squashed alongside one tank and six motorbikes, weighing a total of 16 tonnes.

As they crossed the Channel he climbed on top of the tank to look out of a porthole. But then, suddenly, the towrope dropped. “I felt the towrope go, because once it drops it’s like you hit a brick wall. I couldn’t move, I just hung on, and that’s how I landed in Normandy, spread-eagled on top of a Tetrarch tank.”

Their job was to quickly make their way to Ranville Bridge over the Orne, taken earlier in the day, and hold it. He spent his first night in Normandy dug in there, then he moved to an orchard at Ranville. His stay would be brief.

“Each day we went out, pretty deep into the countryside, to find out where the Germans were and report back,” said Gladden. “We got chased back a few times.

“I’d been there about 12 days. We could hear the Germans start up their tanks of a morning. And, although we used to go out quite a bit, the fighting went on in the Ranville area for a long time.”

On 18 June he came back from patrol as usual. “And I was just about to pour the water out and have a brew up when suddenly there was a bang, and I was on my back.” A German Tiger tank had fired on the group. The whole of the front of his ankle was blown off. “I had just my Achilles holding my foot on,” he said.

Colleagues carried him to an old barn used to treat casualties. Two days earlier, Gladden had helped carry the bodies of two friends to the same barn. “Little did I know that within the next two days they would be carrying me over.

“I didn’t feel any pain at first. When the pain comes on, they start pushing the old morphine into you. And then you sail away.”

He remembers coming to a field hospital. Doctors were struggling to save his foot. “‘Amputation considered’: that was on the ticket I read around my neck when I came to, lying on a stretcher on the grass being sick as a dog.”

Gladden was evacuated to the UK. He spent the following three years in hospital, with his foot only finally being saved by a sophisticated bone graft involving both his legs being temporarily sewn and plastered together. His foot has troubled him ever since. The injury meant he was discharged from the army on medical grounds.

“I count myself very lucky,” said Gladden, from Welling, Kent, who went on to work in the accounts department at Siemens. “I survived, thousands didn’t.”

He has returned to Ranville 10 times during recent years, since becoming a widower, and was heading there again for the 75th anniversary of D-day as a guest of the Taxi Charity. “It’s a nostalgic visit. And it is nice to get thanks from the people out there. But I think the main thing is to keep alive the fact that victory didn’t come cheap.

“There were thousands of young men who were killed and maimed in those first few days, and we just don’t want any more wars. That’s the way I look at it.”

Bill Fitzgerald: ‘Looking at the bodies, you felt sorry about it, but you had a job to get on that beach and wait for your friends.’ Photograph: Jonathan Brady/PA

Get off this bloody beach: “Looking at the bodies, you felt sorry about it”

Before the 75th commemorations, seven surviving veterans from the Battle of Normandy and D-day were honoured at an event at the Royal Hospital Chelsea.

Chelsea pensioner Bill Fitzgerald, 94, who served with the Sussex regiment and was only 18 at the time, said: “We were the third in on the day. We got so far in and then we hit something underneath, so we knew we were going to get wet.

“The beach master was there shouting out: ‘Get off this bloody beach and don’t get killed.’

“The water was full of bodies and they were mostly all Marine Commandos – but you couldn’t take too much notice, all you were thinking of was helping each other,” he said. “Looking at the bodies, you felt sorry about it, but you had a job to get on that beach and wait for your friends.”

He was injured nine days after D-day in a shelling on 15 June. “We had a horrible day fighting and the tanks decided to stop in the woods,” he said. “Believe me, they shelled the hell out of us.

“All I can remember is getting a shell very near me, going up in the air and coming down and one of my friends putting a helmet over my face,” he said, speaking at the Royal Hospital Chelsea last month. His femur was broken in half and he was flown back to the UK on 17 June.

“After I was discharged, I got my suit, I got my hat, and you’re outside the door saying: ‘What’s next?’”

Frank Mouqué: ‘It was a different time: I wasn’t a hero, I was a little cog in a big wheel.’ Photograph: Matt Dunham/AP

Bomb disposal: “Let’s face it, the landing was very gory”

Chelsea pensioner Frank Mouqué, 94, was a corporal in the Royal Engineers who landed on Sword beach and whose job was to dispose of bombs on a stretch of land beyond the parapet next to the beach.

“We approached Sword beach in a landing craft. We had all of our gear on our backs and a rubber ring around our stomach to help keep us afloat. Let’s face it, the landing was very gory. You didn’t have time to think, survival instinct kicked in,” he said in his account published on the Royal Hospital Chelsea’s website.

“After reaching the beach, I ran up towards a parapet, and searched for mines. After 12 hours of being on the go we were exhausted and then had to dig a foxhole to sleep in. We had to dig six foot down and two foot wide.

“I slept outside for the next year or so, we had no protection from the elements. We had an oversized gas cape to go over our clothes and all our gear. We rarely slept lying down. Each time we slept in a barn we were ravaged by fleas – so even that was no good.

“It was a different time: I wasn’t a hero, I was a little cog in a big wheel. When you add all those little cogs together – then we became important. We all worked together towards peace.”

Alan Gaudern: ‘My mother was both mother and father to me and I think she did a good job with that.’

Born on D-day: “It isn’t my wish that you remain a widow”

Alan Gaudern was born on D-day in Harrogate, North Yorkshire. His father, William, a teacher, would never see him. Serving in Normandy with the Somerset Light Infantry, William was killed on 10 July 1944 at the age of 37. Alan – who has visited Normandy, in particular Hill 112 west of Caen, which his father fought to recapture, and Bayeux war cemetery, where he is buried – has retained his last letters written from the front.

The letters, read by Alan, form part of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s Voices of Liberation audio archive. During the 75th anniversary commemorations at Portsmouth and Bayeux, there will be installations where the public can listen to many of those voices.

William and his wife, Ethel, already had a daughter, Joyce, aged four, when Alan was born. “Alan William was born on 6 June at Harrogate hospital. Ethel and he are both doing well, from what I hear,” William wrote to family friends. “I haven’t see my son and heir yet, so you can guess how much I am looking forward to my next leave. When that will be, I don’t know.”

But it was not to be. William’s last letter to Ethel was dated 18 June 1944. He was on the move, he said. “It is a lovely summer morning, so we should have as comfortable a trip as is possible. The countryside was perfect as we came along, so fresh and full of beauty,” he wrote.

William Gaudern

He enclosed a £5 cheque, sent to him at the front by his father. “Please cash it and spend it on yourself, on something you would really like. I shall look forward to hearing what it is, and later to seeing you wearing it,” he wrote.

The letter continues: “You know we’ve faced up to the likelihood that I may not come back. But you know I feel I shall come back because I want to so much. We’ve had a perfect married life together, haven’t we?”

He adds: “But if I don’t come back, I want you to know how much I owe to you and to thank you for our lovely life together. And to let you know that it isn’t my wish that you remain a widow if you really fall in love again. I am happy in the knowledge that you’ll bring up Joyce and Alan to be useful and good God-fearing citizens. If I don’t come back, teach them as much nature study as you know, which is a great deal.

“I hope we can sit down one day and laugh at what I’ve written. Wish me a happy landings and be a brave lass like you always are. You’re not to worry or else the milk will go sour.”

Alan, a retired bank manager, and himself a father, said: “My mother was both mother and father to me and I think she did a good job with that. Yes, I felt as I look back that I would have wished to have a father as a male role model, which is so important. But my mother was an amazing woman.

“She was left with a four-year-old and a six-week-old baby to fend for herself. People now don’t realise how difficult it was for war widows. Yes, my mother got a war widow’s pension, but that was taxable. Taxable! For a war widow.”

William Moody: ‘I am always amazed when I see the veterans go past marching.’

Bayeux cemetery: “I feel as though I am passing the legacy of remembrance on to future generations”

Three generations of William Moody’s family have worked for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) in France. As supervisor of the sector that takes in Normandy, Moody, 67, has a responsibility for ensuring the Bayeux military cemetery, the largest British second world war cemetery in France, looks perfect for the 75th anniversary.

There are 4,144 Commonwealth burials there, each one marked with a white headstone. Maintenance is ongoing throughout the year. Each headstone is cleaned. The turf is fertilised and cropped short to maintain its vivid green. Seasonal plantings include roses, designed to bloom in June on the anniversary.

“The headstone is the identity of the soldier, with his badge, and his name and his regiment. So it’s so important. You see old veterans, standing by the graves of perhaps a friend they lost. Sometimes they rest their hand on the headstone. This is their comrade, whom they lost in the landings. As I walk past, I keep very quiet, because they are honouring their comrades. They are here to see their friends. It’s very emotional,” said Moody.

“And the plantings, to me, it is as if each one has their own little garden, like they might have done back home, if they had lived. I am proud to be able to honour those that fell and to give them a place that seems like home, although they are sometimes so far from home.

“I feel as though I am passing the legacy of remembrance on to future generations, ensuring that we can always come to these remarkable places to reflect on the courage, sacrifice and the real cost in human terms that these men and women made to preserve our freedom.”

Moody has worked for 52 years with the CWGC, starting as a pupil gardener. His father, who is from Aberystwyth in Wales, served with the Royal Signals, serving in India before coming to France after the Normandy landings and staying there to work for the CWGC in northern France.

He has witnessed many anniversaries at Bayeux, and other CWGC cemeteries throughout Europe and north Africa. But it is the scale of the Bayeux commemorations he always finds so moving. “I am always amazed when I see the veterans go past marching. They try to keep straight, they are soldiers still, and the pride is there. They walk straight, and some of them have difficulties walking, but they still do it, they try to march, and its a huge effort for them, but they want to show the public they are still there,” he said.

Jeremy Green: ‘The Americans came here with great enthusiasm based upon an analogue system of taking the weather ...’ Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images

Weather: “Eisenhower was smoking five packs a day”

Col Jeremy Green (retired), is a historian and expert on Southwick House, the Allied HQ near Portsmouth, from where Gen “Ike” Eisenhower made the decision to delay by one day. Green said initially there were huge differences between American and British and Norwegian meteorologists. And had Ike, the supreme allied commander, listened to his fellow Americans, D-day could have been a disaster.

“The Americans came here with great enthusiasm based upon an analogue system of taking the weather by a guy called Irving Krick. He basically said if you look at historical weather patterns, and if those conditions are replicated again, the same weather would occur,” said Green. “And the problem for us, the Brits, was he was briefing Eisenhower direct.”

The American military initially refused to talk to the British chief meteorologist, James Stagg, “because he was a civilian”, until Stagg was temporarily made a group captain in the Royal Air Force.

Stagg was receiving information from weather stations including, crucially, Blacksod Lighthouse in County Mayo, on Ireland’s west coast. A huge depression rapidly moving into the Channel did not augur well for 5 June, the original planned day of the Normandy invasion, thought Stagg. Krick thought 5 June was “good to go”.

Ike was living on his nerves, “smoking five packs of cigarettes a day, drinking too much coffee, eating little and sleeping less,” said Green.

With disagreements among the meteorologists, Stagg decided it fell to him to give an “unequivocal and firm opinion on the deterioration of the weather”. He told him 5 June would be overcast, stormy, with winds too strong to land troops, and cloud offering just 500ft-to-zero visibility.

His words were greeted with silence, said Green.

In the end, Eisenhower’s decision rested on Stagg’s opinion that there would be a brief “interlude” on 6 June. Eisenhower made his fateful decision. His diary records that on what should have been invasion day he awoke in the early hours to find “our little camp was shaking and shuddering under a wind of almost hurricane proportions and the accompanying rain seems to be travelling in horizontal streaks”.

Stagg had been right. If the invasion had started that morning, it would have failed.

Hours later, at the morning meeting, he announced his decision. Trusting Stagg, once more, the invasion was on for 6 June.

Veterans wave flags from the MV Boudicca as it leaves the port of Dover in Kent on 2 June to mark the 75th anniversary of D-day. Photograph: Kirsty O’Connor/PA

Naval commander: “History may not repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme”

Commander Craig Wood, of the Portsmouth flotilla, has responsibility for the naval homage to commemorate D-day in the UK.

“This is an opportunity to commemorate our comrades who have gone before us, and to salute those who are still with us. And to recognise the phenomenal feat they embarked upon, which, I think, even after 30 years of service, is very difficult to even begin to imagine what that must have been like,” he said.

Part of the Portsmouth flotilla’s role during the D-day event is to perform a salute to the 300 veterans aboard the Royal British Legion’s specially chartered MV Boudicca. “As the Boudicca sails with veterans to arrive in Normandy on 6 June, as they did 75 years ago, we are escorting her out, and further RN ships at sea will salute them as they go past,” he said.

The frigate andsubmarine hunter HMS St Albans will escort the Boudicca and fire a salute to the veterans on board. The flotilla includes frigates and minehunters taking part in a sailpast in the Solent.

“It’s been really heartening to see the young men and women of the armed forces coming together for this. Those same values and standards, the ethos of the armed forces 75 years ago and before, still resonate today,” he said.

With the dwindling number of second world war veterans, many have predicted this will be the last such occasion to commemorate D-day.

“Never say never,” said Wood. “The 70th anniversary was going to be the last event, and here we are five years later, And we still have a number of veterans. A naval historian once told me that history may not repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme. And it is wonderful we can still engage with the veterans to remind ourselves about what they went through.

“It’s humbling to see that spark in their eye as they recall what they did. Their humility is the thing that resonates with me. The ‘I was just doing my job, I played a very small part’. Not one of them would ever claim to be a hero of the day.”

• This article was amended on 3 June 2019. Percy Lewis regularly recites the exhortation, not the exultation, during the annual commemorations.