According to his family, Horace “Harry” Billinge, a D-Day veteran, died at the age of 96 on April 25 2022 after a brief illness.
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Mr Billinge, from St Austell, Cornwall, joined the 44 Royal Engineer Commandos as a sapper ahead of the Normandy landings when he was 18 years old.
On the 6th of June 1944, he was one of only four members of his unit to survive the storming of Gold Beach. The veteran collected for the Royal British Legion’s Poppy Appeal for more than 60 years.
“The passion he had for all the veterans who lost their lives was unwavering,” his daughter Sally Billinge-Shandley said.
After raising funds to build a national memorial honouring his fallen comrades, Mr Billinge was awarded an MBE in 2020.
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He dedicated it to the 22,442 servicemen and women who died on D-Day and in the Battle of Normandy.
The British Normandy Trust paid tribute to him on social media, saying: “The trust expresses its heartfelt condolences to Harry’s wife, Sheila, as well as his entire family and friends. For the memorial, Harry raised more than £50,000.”
He visited the Normandy cemeteries on an annual basis before his death.”It just became a huge part of his life,” Mrs Billinge-Shandley said of the Normandy veterans’ memorial.
On D-Day, about 160,000 troops from the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, France, and other Allied nations landed in Normandy for Operation Overlord, the largest seaborne invasion in history.
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