Lest we forget... Photographer Frank Dwyer captured this moving photograph of Normandy veteran Ken Smith in a field of poppies near York.

Ken, now 94, from Wheldrake, was a young infantryman with the Leicestershire regiment when he landed on Gold Beach on D-Day. He survived the Normandy campaign unscathed, but was wounded by shrapnel in the thigh in October 1944 after fighting through to Holland.

Poppies are inescapably identified with the two world wars. But during the thick of the fighting, Ken admits, he and his fellow soldiers ‘didn’t see a lot of poppy fields’.

Ken and fellow Normandy veteran Ken Cooke will be going up to Edinburgh later this summer when a play based on their experiences, Bomb Happy, is due to be performed at the Edinburgh Fringe. First performed in 2017, and revived this year for the 75th anniversary of D-Day, the play has received standing ovations wherever it has been shown.

Stephen Lewis