D-Day veteran receives medals 82 years on

D-Day veteran Douglas Halley has received replacement wartime medals more than 80 years after taking part in the Normandy landings. The recognition restores a record of his service and gives his family something to pass on to future generations.

Halley, 102 and from Sheffield, served for about eight years in the Royal Artillery and landed in Normandy in June 1944, aged 20. His grandson Luke said Halley remembered the danger and losses on the beaches, as well as playing the organ in a French church; after leaving the Army, he ran three butcher’s shops in Sheffield for 70 years. His eligibility was identified through a veterans’ oral-history project, and the family obtained the 1939–45 Star, the France and Germany Star, and the War Medal 1939–45 from the Ministry of Defence.