A WAR veteran who has been picked to accompany a Worcester choir to a concert to mark the 60th anniversary of the D-Day landings was actually ill in bed during the final showdown.

John Hinton, who will join the Worcester Male Voice Choir for a three-day commemoration next month, was laid up with broncho-pneumonia on June 6, 1944, earning himself the title of 'D-Day Dodger'.

As sick-berth-attendant to a flotilla of landing barges on the River Dart, which had a role to play in the forthcoming invasion, he was called to help rescue survivors of an American assault craft which capsized shortly before D-Day.

But, in the pandemonium, they were unprepared for the task in hand, leaving Mr Hinton, of Victoria Avenue, Worcester, with bittersweet memories.

"With hindsight it is obvious we should have donned protective clothing," the 80-year-old said in a letter penned to the choir to win the trip to Portsmouth from June 3-6.

"But we were responding to an immediate emergency and no one could have predicted we would be spending all night in an open boat in atrocious weather desperately searching for survivors.

"No wonder I caught a cold. That is how I came to find myself in hospital with broncho-pneumonia when the dreaded D-Day arrived.

"I lay in bed with a strong sense of guilt mingled with an element of relief, listening to news of the landing and wondering how my mates were faring."

A few days later one was admitted to the same ward, also with pneumonia, and told Mr Hinton how the engine of his barge had broken down halfway across the Channel.

However, he never heard from the other flotilla crew members.

Discharged

"As soon as I recovered I was discharged from hospital into the ranks of other D-Day Dodgers and drafted out to the Far East," he said.

Mr Hinton, who co-incidentally also rang hand bells for Worcester Male Voice Choir in 1966, will attend a midday concert with his wife on Friday, June 4, on the Isle of Wight.

This will be followed by a performance in the steep gorge of Shanklin Chine and one in Portsmouth's Castle Field, where they will sing with the Solent Male Voice Choir at St Wilfrid's Church in Cowplain.

On Sunday, the choir will perform the Mass at Portsmouth's Roman Catholic Cathedral before returning home.