SOLDIERS past and present are to make an emotional return to the beaches of D-Day to keep memories of their comrades alive.

A party of 30 Green Howards is heading for Normandy on a five-day pilgrimage during which they will visit the regiment memorial in the tiny village of Crepon.

Among the party will be some of those who landed on the beaches on June 6, 1944, including George Hewling, from Whitby, and John Milton, from Harrogate.

They were with the 6th and 7th Battalions, which landed at Gold Beach near La Riviere on the coast at 7.37am on D-Day.

With them was Company Sergeant Major Stan Hollis, who won the only Victoria Cross awarded that day, for actions that included the clearing of enemy machine gunners at a battery at Mont Fleury, and later, at Crepon, where he rescued two men trapped by enemy fire.

The memorial at Crepon, which depicts a Green Howards soldier resting during the advance, was unveiled in 1996 by King Harald of Norway, the Colonel in Chief of the Green Howards, and has been the focus of the regiment's D-Day remembrance since then.

The Green Howards visitors will be joined by a party led by Field Marshal Lord Inge KG, former Chief of the Defence Staff and a Green Howard. At a service, two buglers from the 1st Battalion the Green Howards will blow the Last Post.

As well as their visit to Crepon, the visitors will tour the battlefield, following the routes of the 6th and 7th Battalions under the guidance of one of the leading authorities on the D-Day landings, Brigadier Christopher Dunphie.