THREE North-East war veterans who were among the first Allied soldiers to land in occupied France on D-Day will feature in a TV documentary this weekend.

ITV Tyne Tees commissioned D-Day: 60 Years Later, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the landings.

The programme follows three Newcastle paratroopers on their return to the battlefields.

The trio were dropped in the early hours of June 6, 1944, to take the vitally important bridges which crossed the River Orne and the Caen Canal - keeping the route open for the Allied troops who landed on the Normandy beaches.

Byker-born Billy Ness, of the 12th Yorkshire Parachute Battalion, was only 19 when he jumped into the darkness over Normandy.

And Paratrooper John Montgomery, from Benwell, was one of the first to reach Pegasus Bridge and hold it against ferocious German counter attacks.

Jim Conway, now a North Tyneside councillor, remembers the confusion of the landings and how the paras relied on French villagers to help them find the German positions.

The documentary also tells the story of the French families involved, and what it meant to them when they were freed after four years of German occupation.

D-Day: 60 Years Later, an Ed Skelding Production, shows on Tyne Tees on Sunday, at 12.30pm

Published: 22/06/2004