The 75th anniversary of the D-Day invasion of Europe is Thursday, June 6.

High River Air Force Veteran, Rae Lunn, was just 21 years old when he shipped off to England in 1942, as a Leading Aircraftsman.

He says his job up to and during the invasion was to make sure Canadian, British and American bombers kept flying.

"Our role was to make sure the "kites" or the airplanes were fit and ready to go, and that was on June the 6th. They were going to go on June the 5th, but the English Channel was too rough and they had to postpone it one day."

The now 99 year old Lunn says his job on that day, and others before and after the allied invasion was to keep the bombers running.

"All I remember is we had to wait for the kite's to come back, one engine or two engines, fix them up and get them ready to go again. And that happened all that time and we had been doing some of that over Berlin for many months ahead of D-Day."

He says his job was to make sure the bombers kept flying, but it was tough not seeing as many of them come back.

"That's for sure, there were quite a few that didn't come back. Some of them got coming back, and they were having a problem for landing. However, I had a lot of respect for the people that were in the planes. We were called the ground crew, they were called the air crew. I have a lot of respect for those people."

Lunn says he spent most of the war in Yorkshire, but when he first got to Europe, he actually landed in Scotland, in his Mother's hometown.

 

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