TRIBUTES have been paid to much-loved Normandy veteran Billy Reynolds, who died this week aged 100.
The father-of-three was one of two surviving Islanders to have fought in the historic campaign, which laid the foundations for the Allied victory in the Second World War, and the last member of Jersey’s Normandy Veterans Association.
He saw action on Sword Beach ten days after D-Day as a member of the Guards Armoured Division and went on to fight in the Battle for Caen and Operation Market Garden in German-occupied Netherlands.
Describing his time in Normandy during an interview with the JEP in June to mark both his 100th birthday and Armed Forces Day, Mr Reynolds said: “You can’t forget it. When you have laid in a silt trench with a bomb two feet away from you and another four feet away and you can’t get out because of the explosions and you were under full-scale attack, you’ll always remember it.”
Returning to Jersey after the war, Mr Reynolds began working as a fresh-fish delivery driver before establishing the successful wholesaler W J Reynolds.
He also became one of the Island’s leading racing drivers, regularly competing in the Channel Islands Championships.
In 1950 he married Doreen, who passed away four years ago, and he continued to live in the house they shared in St Saviour until he was taken ill days before he died.
The Islander, who was awarded France’s highest military honour, the Legion d’Honneur, for his actions throughout the war, was a regular face in the D-Day and Remembrance Services over the years, alongside a sadly ever reducing number of fellow veterans.
Former Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers driver Ernest Thorne is now the Island’s last surviving Normandy veteran.
Author and historian Chris Stone, who helped Mr Reynolds write his autobiography Dangerous Driving: A Life Behind the Wheel, in 2015, said: “He was very friendly, always had a twinkle in his eye and had a great sense of humour.
“He was a joy to be with and it was an absolute privilege to have known him.”
Mr Stone added that he was “quite frankly amazed” that his old friend had lived to 100, after having “numerous crazy adventures during his life”.
“He learnt to drive when he was still a child by driving the family’s ice-cream van around the beaches, which was obviously dangerous,” Mr Stone said. “He left Jersey just before the Germans invaded and he remembers being crammed in to the hold of the boat with just a punnet of cherries to eat.
“He was driving a fruit and veg van through London during the Blitz, and was often under shellfire in Normandy and had a lot of lucky escapes.”
Mr Stone added: “He was someone who lived life in the fast lane.
“He loved cars and he wanted to be a fighter pilot but at the time the Air Force wasn’t recruiting. He lived his life to the full and after the war went on to have a family and a successful business.
“Despite everything he achieved he was very down to earth.”
