LEN Davidge, 96 year old D-Day veteran and holder of the Legion d’honneur (the highest French order of merit), died from natural causes whilst walking near his Winchester home on Sunday December 27. A service celebrating his life was held at the Charlton Park Crematorium, near Andover, on Tuesday. The celebration, led by Wesley (Weeke) Methodist Church Minister, Revd Canon Dr G Howard Mellor, was attended by his close family members. Len was born in the seaside town of Eastbourne in 1924. His father Walter had been an RNVR reservist who volunteered to serve in the Royal Navy during World War 1. With this background it was, perhaps, unsurprising that when the Second World War commenced, Len, while still a teenager, was anxious to ‘do his bit’. Upon reaching 18, and now living at St Albans with his parents and brother, he volunteered to join the Navy ‘until the end of the period of the present emergency’.