D-Day veteran George Batts has died.

Mr Batts from Beverley Road, Barming, was only 18 when he landed on Gold Beach in Normandy on June 6, 1944.

In later life, he instituted a 10-year campaign to erect the British Normandy Memorial near the site where many of his colleagues had fallen.

The memorial at the town of Ver-sur-Mer overlooking Gold Beach records the names of the 22,442 servicemen who died on D-Day, when 160,000 British, American and Canadian troops had landed on three beaches as part of Operation Overlord.

It marked the beginning of the liberation of France

Mr Batts himself recalled the time as "horrific and frightening."

He was later awarded France's highest military honour, the Legion d'Honneur, and was also made an MBE in recognition of his campaign to see the memorial estabished and in visiting schools to inform new generations of the sacrifices made on their behalf. He also compiled an archive of eye-witness accounts from the battlefields called Normandy Voices.

Mr Batts' own role a Sapper with the Royal Engineers was the highly dangerous task of clearing the beaches of mines and booby traps. He later helped build the Mulberry Harbour to enable the Allied forces to be re-supplied.

He had been the last serving General Secretary of the the now-disbanded Normandy Veterans Association.

His biography entitled Reflections: Batts from Barming, is available from the Normandy Memorial Trust.

Mr Batts, a grandfather, was 97.