A Haverfordwest war veteran has been awarded France's highest bravery medal 74 years after he landed on Sword D-Day Beach as a teenage artillery soldier.

Ninety-four-years-old Mr Peter Webb of St Martin's Park was presented with the Legion D'Honneur at the weekend by the Honorary French Consul for Wales, Madame Marie Brousseau-Navarro, at the Mayor's Parlour in Picton Town House, the Town Council's office in Picton Place.

Other veterans in their nineties throughout the country have benefited from a French initiative to make British service people Chevaliers de la Legion D'Honneur to commemorate the end of World War Two.

Mr Webb went ashore on Sword Beach from a Landing Craft in March 1943 as a 19-years-old Driver Radio Operator with the 73rd Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment Royal Artillery to lay telecommunication cables for troops chasing the enemy through France, Belgium and Holland.

"Before I drove the Colonel ashore in a Jeep, we had spent five uncomfortable days cruising to and fro in The Channel awaiting orders. It was so rough the Landing Craft was bending in the middle in the swell and the skipper told us not to worry because, if the vessel broke in half, the two halves would still float independently.

"We were bombed and strafed by enemy aircraft and I had two narrow escapes, one when I left my jacket hanging on a stake and returned to find it with shell holes through it, and again when a large piece of bomb shrapnel landed inches from my head."

He added that the unit's 40mm Bofors guns scored several successes shooting down V1"Doodlebugs."

Mr Webb, whose son Robert attended the award presentation, accompanied the Allied advance through France, Holland and Germany and later served in Lebanon, Tripoli, Egypt and North Africa before demob in September 1947, after which he worked as an insurance agent for the Prudential in Haverfordwest for 33 years.

"It was a great honour to receive the medal after all these years and the Consul said she was grateful to the British soldiers as we freed her parents who lived in Normandy," he said.