Juno Beach D-Day veteran who helped liberate Bergen-Belsen dies age 104
A D-Day veteran who landed on Juno Beach on 6 June 1944 before going on to help liberate the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp has died aged 104.
Donald Sheppard, a dispatch rider for the Royal Engineers, told BFBS Forces News earlier this year that it had been "like a strange adventure... definitely an experience I should never forget".
The British Normandy Memorial account posted on X: "We are saddened to hear of the death of 104-year-old D-Day veteran Donald Sheppard.
"Donald attended the virtual opening of the Memorial in 2021 and features in the Winston Churchill Centre @PoppyLegion exhibition.
"Thinking of Donald's wife Sandra and family. Rest in peace, Don."
Mr Sheppard was one of the 156,000 British, American and Canadian troops who landed by sea and air on French soil in one of the most successful military operations in history.
Speaking ahead of the 80th anniversary of D-Day, he said: "We didn't have a lot of time to consider what it was like because we were busy in action most of the time."
The landing craft he was on had a difficult time reaching the beach where he and his colleagues were supporting the Canadians.
And once he had arrived on Juno Beach, he said: "The noise and everything behind me, it was pretty real, you knew you were in some trouble."
After breaking through German lines in the August, he continued through to Belgium, Holland and eventually Germany – including to the infamous Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
Speaking of his experience, Mr Sheppard said he would "never forget that for the rest of my life. How one human could do that to another".
The only wound he knew about receiving during the war was a cut to his leg as he took cover in a ditch while German bombs fell.
After medical tests and scans some seven decades later, however, it was discovered he had a sliver of shrapnel sitting in his lung, although this had never caused him any health problems.
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