D-Day 80 The Last Veterans: Harry Rawlins

Harry Rawlins, Age 97, King’s Royal Rifles 

Interviewed 4 July 2023

Died 10 June 2024

Now a Chelsea Pensioner, Harry Rawlins was a rifleman with The King’s Royal Rifle Corps and among the reinforcements in the weeks following the invasion.

He landed on the Mulberry Harbour, the artificial harbour towed across the Channel.

He passed through the Falaise Gap where the last major Normandy battle took place. 

He said: "We were sent to a camp and they said you will be here.

"And that we could either do drill or learn a bit of French so we decided to learn a bit of French.

"There was still a bit of fighting going on in Normandy.

"They used to come over above us at night but I wasn’t really in it until I got posted to the start of Market Garden (in Holland).

"We went to the Falaise Gap where they had encircled the German Army and sent these rocket Typhoons in to blast everything there and the stench was terrible and the dead and the dying, the cattle, the horses and the men.

"The machines turned over, it was terrible."

Mr Rawlins’ unit then advanced through Belgium and Holland.

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