UK's oldest man D-Day veteran Donald Rose has died aged 110

Mr Rose was given the ‘Freedom of The Borough’ in Derbyshire earlier this year.

He was presented with the honour at his care home in Ilkeston by Harry Atkinson, The Mayor of Erewash.

Speaking to LBC about the honour in May, Mr Rose said: “It’s pretty special, I didn’t think these things would happen to me. It doesn’t make me any better than anybody else though.”

He said: “I just want to say thank you so much everyone for coming. I didn’t do anything back then that anybody else wasn’t doing.”

Mr Rose was born in 1914 and brought up in Westcott, near Dorking in Surrey. He was the youngest of four brothers and three sisters.

He enlisted on July 26 1940 in Guildford at the age of 25 and undertook his training at Stoughton Barracks, Guildford.

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Once the UK’s oldest World War Two veteran, Mr Rose was one of the first soldiers onto the beaches in Normandy during the D-Day landings before fighting in North Africa as one of the illustrious ‘Desert Rats’.

He was shot in the leg during the D-Day landings, which saw Allied troops land on five beaches in northern France, in what was a turning point in the Second World War.

He was part of an advance party that placed what were known as beacon lamps on beaches so the Allies could establish their bridgehead to liberate Europe from Hitler and the Nazis.

The lamps flashed a Morse code letter every seven seconds so landing craft packed with troops could find their designated drop-off zone.