D-Day: The incredible memories of the only Wren to witness troops leaving Plymouth for Normandy

Watch Dr Suzanne Sparrow reflect on the day she watched 30,000 troops leave Saltash Passage for Normandy.

A former Wren from Plymouth has remembered the moment she watched tens of thousands of US troops leave Plymouth for Normandy 80 years ago.

Dr Suzanne Sparrow, who is now 99-years-old, was the only Wren at Saltash Passage when the boats carrying the troops left for Normandy.

She remains one of the last witnesses to the city's role in the D-Day landings of 1944.

Today, she joined hundreds of others at Saltash Passage in commemorating the special anniversary.

The Passage, on the Devon and Cornwall border, is where around 36,000 US soldiers of V and VII Corps left on their way to land on Omaha and Utah Beaches.

"I feel there's an aura about it, because I've been here," she told ITV News as she reflected on 6 June 1944, exactly 80 years ago.

"I remember thinking: 'This is really a bit much,' and feeling that those young men, were only the same age as myself, 19. They had no idea what they were going through.

Suzanne was just 17 years old when she joined the Wrens in 1942.

"I thought, at least I'd been through the Blitz and I knew a bit more about what it was about.

"They were walking past on to that landing point," she told ITV News West Country reporter Jacquie Bird as she pointed to an area on grass nearby.

She says it didn't occur to her until much later in life that she was the only Wren present when the troops left for France.

"Of course one didn't realise or think of it for many years afterwards and then I woke up one day and thought, 'I was the only one there,'" she said.

Dr Sparrow left the Navy when the war ended and has since become one of Plymouth's most successful businesswomen.

She founded The Suzanne Sparrow Plymouth Language School in 1978, bringing over European students, placing them with host families and teaching them English.