02-05-2025
D-Day hero who survived Normandy landings and being shot three times dies aged 101
A D-Day hero who survived the Normandy landings and being shot three times has died aged 101.
Cecil Newton, a trooper with the 4th/7th Royal Dragoon Guards, died peacefully in his sleep on Thursday, his family said.
In a message, his son Paul said: 'Thank you all for your friendship for my father and for supporting his efforts to remember those of the 4/7 RDG who did not come back.'
Former defence secretary Sir Grant Shapps was among those paying tribute. He said: 'I was deeply moved to hear of the passing of Cecil Newton, a true hero of D-Day.
'At just 20, he landed under fire at Gold Beach and helped liberate Europe. He lived to 101, bearing witness to the freedom he fought for. We owe him - and his generation - a debt we can never fully repay.'
Friend and historian Gary Wright added: 'For those of you who met my dear old friend Trooper Cecil Newton I received the news last night that he died yesterday at 17:00 Thursday 1 May 2025.
'He was 101 and one of our last D-Day veterans. He arrived on Gold Beach in an amphibious tank with 4/7 Royal Dragoon Guards.'
His death comes just days before the country prepares to mark the 80th anniversary of VE Day - signalling eight decades since the end of the Second World War in Europe - on Thursday, May 8.
Mr Newton, from Aldbourne, in Wiltshire, was one of the last survivors of the assault on the D-Day beaches in 1944. He was 20 when, after boarding at Lepe Beach in the New Forest, he became of of the first to land on Gold Beach on 6 June 1944.
He went ashore in a Sherman Duplex Drive (DD) tank, an amphibious craft equipped with a propeller that enabled it to travel across water.
Mr Newton's tank crew was in action for just a few minutes after landing in Normandy.
The tank was among several not to make it off the beach when it sank in a water-filled shell hole, but all the crew got out. They were later among the first British troops to enter the city of Lille.
In an interview about the landings he said: 'We weren't nervous. At least, I wasn't – but I haven't got much imagination.'
He said the others, however, were not so calm. 'They didn't really show it until they became 'tank happy'. That means they wouldn't get out of the tank.'
The Shermans – nicknamed 'Donald Duck tanks' – could motor in on the surface of the water.
Mr Newton's crew trained in the Solent. 'We would sail from Calshot down to the Isle of Wight at night-time in a tank. With a mast, with port and starboard lights on. Very nice. The fact that we couldn't swim never occurred to anybody.'
He arrived to a grim scene at Gold beach. 'The weather was so shocking. A grey, grey strip of landscape behind grey sea.'
Mr Newton's tank lodged in a shell-hole by an enemy gun emplacement.
'If we hadn't been swamped he'd have got us point-blank, so somebody was looking after us,' he says.
By midday all opposition had been subdued. 'We were one of the most fortunate beaches, from a very hairy start,' he said.
'A cycle troop landed and dumped the bikes, a heap of them. So I took one and then went for a cycle down the beach in the afternoon. The beach there was lovely; it was like Bognor.'
Mr Newton was among those who liberated the town of Cruelly where a school is now named after him.
One week after the landing, his squadron was involved in heavy fighting in Verne-Sur-Mer in which half of his troop - more than 100 men - were killed.
'As we appeared they knobbled us,' he said.
'The Germans had settled down on a forward-looking slope and as we appeared they knobbled us.
'I had a new tank and went on and continued through Europe.'
Mr Newtown was later severely wounded when his tank came under attack close to the German border in November 1944.
He was shot three times in the leg and chest as he got out of his tank.
He kept a fragment from a shell that was embedded in his foot, given as a souvenir by the surgeon at a casualty clearing station.
Following the war, he later went on to qualify as a quantity surveyor and moved to Swindon.
In 2015, he was one of a dozen veterans of the battle for Normandy to be celebrated in a series of portraits commissioned by the then Prince of Wales.
In June 2024, Mr Newton returned to France to take part in the D-Day 80th anniversary commemorations.
He read out the names of more than 100 comrades killed during the invasion.
He also laid a wreath at the memorial after abandoning his wheelchair and managing a few steps with the aid of his walker.
