Obituary: Norwich's kind-hearted Normandy veteran who 'lit up the room' dies aged 97

One of Norfolk’s quiet heroes who witnessed the bloodshed and horror of the Longest Day and saw comrades pay the ultimate price for freedom, his humility was typical of the Normandy veterans who survived to tell their stories.

With a wide smile that lit up a room, Len drew people to him like a magnet all his life, particularly on trips back to the Normandy beaches he first saw on June 6 1944.

Queues formed to hear Len tell his incredible story, reporters from across the world made a beeline to interview him and in the Caen hotel where he always stayed, the dining room would sway in time to his rendition of Elvis’ I Can’t Help Falling in Love With You.

But in truth, it was everyone that met Len who couldn’t help falling in love with him.

Born and raised in Norwich, Len was one of five children (he is survived by brother Brendon, 94) and, after leaving school aged 14, he found work at the Innisfallen Hotel on Unthank Road, now the Georgian House Hotel, later moving to his second job at Robert’s shoe factory in Norwich when war was declared.

He volunteered as a fire-watcher on the factory roof before joining his friend Cecil Mann to work on an aerodrome being built for the American Air Force.

At 16 he volunteered for the Home Guard, patrolling Mousehold Heath at night, a thrill for a youngster that involved “looking out for German paratroopers and secret agents”.

He later noted: “I helped an elderly couple from their burning house but the old lady was upset because she didn’t have time to bring her pet budgie out so I went in to get it and she was very grateful. I felt a proper hero, rescuing a blooming budgie!”

Len's army papers arrived on July 1 1943 – he was 18. After training, he became a motorcycle dispatch rider.

Just before D-Day, Lance Corporal Fox was sent to the foot of the South Downs Hills, where he and his comrades were placed in a camp surrounded by armed guards.

Mail was censored. Information was scarce but Len was aware something big was about to happen: “We went to the Sergeant Major's tent and we were issued with life jackets, live ammunition, 24-hour rations, French currency and a small book on how to get on with the French population. It suddenly became clear we were going to France!” he said.

“Our platoon officers checked our AB64s, a soldier’s ‘bible’…to make sure we had made our wills and all details were up to date. This really made us think.“

On June 5, Len and his comrades went to Tilbury Docks in London where they prepared to set sail. Len joined an American Liberty ship and was issued with seasickness pills.

“Information then came informing us that we would be landing in Arromanches in Normandy, Gold Beach and not to Pas de Calais, as we all thought,” he said.

“On the way over we were all sick. On arrival we were offered food by the ship's crew but none of us could eat as we looked at the most awesome sight and sound imaginable.

“Warships, troopships, barges, landing craft, inshore rocket craft, planes overhead, barrage balloons, all hell being let loose, the noise bursting my ear drums.

“It was the nearest thing to hell I'd ever seen, and that's where I thought I was.

“The big warships out to sea were pounding targets further inland with heavy shells and a continuous line of barges and landing craft were making for the beach, some of them catching their hulls on underwater obstacles and blowing up.”

At 18:00, the lorries from the ship were winched on to a Rhino barge and Len climbed down a rope ladder. Soaked to the skin, he watched as the ramps on the barges were lowered and the trucks drove on to the French beach.

“Mines were exploding everywhere and one of our trucks was blown up, killing one of the lads from our platoon. While all this was going on, Jerry was stonking [shelling] the beach,” said Len.

“When I got to the beach, there was a beach master who was telling us in no uncertain terms to get our backsides off the beach as quickly as we could. When I was running across the beach we were being stonked by German artillery.

“We knew that there were going to be casualties but we never realised what it would be like. It made a boy into a man overnight.”

Len and his company rendezvoused in a nearby orchard overlooking the beaches where they quickly 'dug in': “We were all in the same boat, basically, all of us were scared. None of us were brave, we had a job to do and we got on with it as best we could,” he said.

“I remember looking down at the coastline. Along the edge of the beach there were body parts on the sand and floating in the sea, the tide was red with the blood of those lads that didn't make it. It made me feel quite sick.”

Moving inland towards Bayeux, Len was put on detachment to an armoured unit carrying messages to and from the beachhead.

Injured while in action by shrapnel in the spine, he needed an operation in England to prevent paralysis, but the aftershock from the explosion would blight his health years later.

Len rejoined his company in time for the liberation of Brussels and served in Belgium, Holland and Germany during the bitterly cold winter of 1944-45 and in April 1945, he received orders to repatriate some DPs (displaced persons) from a camp at Bergen Belsen.

Belsen was a life-changing event for Len, one of the first troops to arrive at the camp, he and his friends witnessed first-hand the Nazi atrocities that had taken place as they broke down the gates and walked inside.

“It turned out to be a concentration camp,” he recalled, “the sights and smells of Belsen I shall remember for the rest of my life. As a young man, it was difficult to understand man's inhumanity to another human being.”

For the rest of his life, nightmares of Belsen haunted Len's sleep.

After a further two years in Germany, Len came home on leave to Norwich in 1947 and the very next day married wife Hazel at Old Lakenham Church. “It was a white wedding in more respects than one – it was 1947 and the coldest winter in living memory. Even the taxis got stuck in the deep snow drifts.”

Len returned to his unit two weeks later and was asked if he would stay on in the army as a drill instructor but decided to return to Norwich where he and Hazel had three children, Carol, Janet and John.

He worked as a lorry driver for a Heigham Street firm and later Birds Eye, before his back injury sustained in the Normandy Campaign led to early retirement.

Tragically, Hazel fell ill before the pair could enjoy retirement together and fulfil their plans to have more of the holidays they loved taking, and died in 1989.

“He was just the most wonderful Dad, Granddad and Great-Grandad,” said daughter Jan, “I can’t describe how much we all loved him, we couldn’t have asked for a better role model.”

Len had seven grandchildren; Sally, Martin, Stephen, Darren, Emma, Lucy and Hayley and 12 great-grandchildren, Jack, Olivia, Jasmine, Tia, Harvey, Charlie, Phoebe, Charlie, Benjamin, Thomas, Ria and George. And he was always in demand.

“Everyone in the family always wanted Dad at the parties,” laughed Jan, “he was such a practical joker, always first on the dancefloor and the first to want to dress up.”

After a short time living with new partner Jean in Lincolnshire, who has since passed away, Len moved back to Norfolk and to his family.

Latterly he had been living at St Edmunds Care Home in Attleborough where he was treated “like a member of the family,” said Jan. He passed away peacefully there on September 12.

His involvement with the Royal British Legion and the Norwich and District Normandy Veterans’ Association saw him give many talks to schoolchildren about his war experiences and go back to Normandy for D-Day anniversaries.

Photographer Denise Bradley and I have accompanied veterans to France on numerous occasions and Len was an absolute highlight of every trip: a kind, generous, funny, warm-hearted man, he was still the life and soul of the party at nearly 95.

Normandy will never be the same without him, we are better for having known him, we will remember the twinkle in his eye and the big hugs forever.

Len, a recipient of France’s highest military honour, the Legion d’Honneur, had been returning to France for more than 30 years, to remember comrades who were lost and a battle that turned wet-behind-the-ears boys into men in minutes.

“Sometimes I think to myself 'was it worth it?' Three of my friends who were blown up at the crossroads are buried in Bayeux and I don't think I could cope if I thought it wasn't worth it,” he said.

“People call us heroes, but we weren't heroes, we were doing our job. The real heroes are the ones that lay in the ground in France.”

His daughter Jan, however, said that to her family, Len will always be their hero.

“He was the head and the heart of our family and we will never stop missing him,” she said.

“But Mum has been waiting for him for such a long time and they’re together now.”

· Len Fox’s funeral will take place at St Faith’s Crematorium on October 5 at 2pm.