He did not like to be called a hero, but on a bright spring day the people of Cornwall turned out in force to give him a send-off fit for one.
Crowds lined the streets of St Austell today to pay their respects to the D-day veteran Harry Billinge, who died earlier this month aged 96.
Billinge, a sapper attached to the 44 Royal Engineer Commandos, was just 18 when he became one of the first British soldiers to land on Gold beach in Normandy in 1944.
In later life, Billinge became a tireless fundraiser and was awarded an MBE after raising more than £50,000 towards a memorial for the 22,442 service personnel killed on D-day and during the Battle of Normandy.
His family, friends, other veterans and many people who didn’t know him but simply wanted to say a fond farewell watched as his coffin was taken through his adopted home town of St Austell before his funeral service at St Paul’s Church in Charlestown.
The singer and presenter Aled Jones performed the hymn Let There Be Peace on Earth. Nicholas Witchell of the Normandy Memorial Trust said: “Harry knew the reality – war is a terrible thing. He was determined to discharge his final duty to friends and colleagues who never came home from the battlefield. The duty to remember.”
On the eve of the funeral one of his daughters, Margot Billinge, said: “Harry was a very loving husband who always looked after mum. As a dad, he taught us great values: honesty, kindness, generosity and not to judge. In an interview a few years ago I recall him saying he just wanted to be remembered as ‘a good old sapper who did his best’.”
Billinge grew up in Kent but had been in Cornwall for 70 years after being advised to leave London for a better quality of life. He and his wife, Sheila, were due to celebrate their 68th wedding anniversary in August.
