Dear David, (Maggie, Rachel, Ryan and the 38 Degrees team), you have written to me:

Dear Simon, In just 2 days Donald Trump will land in Britain. And he’s been invited to attend a D-Day commemoration in Portsmouth. Simon, Donald Trump’s politics don’t belong at a ceremony for those who died fighting fascism for our country. Will you join over 47,000 people today and sign a petition calling for his invitation to be cancelled?

Your campaigns are quite often right, to my mind, and I have supported several and made donations.

On this occasion however you are completely wrong. And especially so in the minds of hundreds of thousands of those minds, who are, actually, the ONLY minds that count in this matter.

The D-Day celebrations are about the lives of the soldiers from Britain and around the Commonwealth AND AMERICA who suffered the nightmare experience of climbing off landing craft on the sea and wading of running onto those beaches in the face of horrifying levels of enemy fire from German guns and shells.

Take a look at the films and hear the survivors recalling the action.

As an ex-British serviceman who has served in a war zone I can tell you with authority that when anyone in a situation where an enemy is trying to kill them with hails of murderous bullets, the importance of the people alongside, striving to overcome and silence that enemy are of more importance at that moment than anyone in the world.

More important than parents and loved ones worrying back home, and more important the politicians who put those people there. You are there voluntarily (though wishing you were not at the second) acting for Queen (or on D-Day King) and country, and your own life and those of your comrades in arms around you.

There are no D-Day (battle of Normandy) soldier living, nor any who have died - numbering 37,000 on land and 17,000 in the air - who WOULD NOT WANT the American People, as well of those of Canda, India, Australia etc who were alongside them at a time of commemoration - being there, in thought, prayer and word.

They expect that presence to be through their Monarch, President or Prime Minister - not some stand-in or deputy.

Those leaders are there to commemorate the action, and its ultimate success. Especially embracing those 2,700 British, 946 Canadians, and 6,603 Americans who died on that, at one time both terrible, but also glorious, day.

Also with a mind to the suffering of the peoples of those countries of western Europe under Nazi occupation who went on to be liberated as an ultimate consequence of D-Day.

Those are the minds that count, and with respect YOU DO NOT speak for those servicemen who put their lives on the line.

And unless you too have been a serviceman or woman, which I doubt, you do not have the right to an opinion other than as a bystander.

And, those minds that DO count, of those people who DO count, would or do NOT CARE a jot for WHO is the President of the USA is, who is there, for them. Nor what his or America’s policies are today. That is America’s business not ours or yours or ours here in Britain.

That the President WILL BE there on behalf of the American people, with those brave soldiers in his thoughts, IS ALL THAT COUNTS.

If you feel the need to mobilise politicians in this matter - THEN - your target should be those of the liberated countries of Europe whose leader - Monarch, President, Prime Minister WILL NOT BE there - that you should focus your energy upon.

Yours sincerely

Simplz Simon

D-Day veteran, 90, beats Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber to No. 1 with haunting ballad

30 May 2019, 18:56 | Updated: 31 May 2019, 09:13

D-Day veteran beats Ed Sheeran to No. 1. Picture: Normandy Memorial Trust/Jamie Wiseman for the Daily Mail

By Maddy Shaw Roberts

For the 75th anniversary of D-Day, this 90-year-old Normandy veteran released a beautiful folk song – and now, he’s made it to No. 1 in Amazon’s music chart.

Jim Radford, the youngest known D-Day veteran, has released a powerful ballad ‘The Shores of Normandy’ for the 75th anniversary of D-Day.

Jim’s newly recorded version of the song, released only a week ago, has edged ahead of Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber’s hit song ‘I Don’t Care’ in the Amazon music chart.

The ballad is inspired by his experience of working on a ship on 6 June 1944, with lyrics about men who ‘stormed the gates of hell’ and ‘died upon that blood-soaked sand’.

Profits from the song will go towards the construction of the British Normandy Memorial, which will record the names of the 22,442 men and women serving under British command who died in the Battle of Normandy.

The monument will be inaugurated on 6 June by Prime Minister Theresa May and French President, Emmanuel Macron.

On his chart success, Jim said: “I’m delighted. I never in my wildest dreams thought I would be No. 1 in any list. The more copies we sell, the more money we raise to build this memorial.

“We want people to remember all those good men. They deserve to be honoured and remembered. The thing that I remember most is seeing [the bodies of] those lads floating in the water – the ones who had to run up the beaches into the machine gun fire and never made it. I can still see their faces now.”

The D-Day hero, who was born in Hull and now lives in Lewisham, served as a galley boy with the Merchant Navy on the Empire Larch, aged just 15.

Speaking on board HMS Belfast on the River Thames to launch the D-Day 75 single, Jim described his role on D-Day as the ‘most dangerous job’, saying the scene at Gold Beach was ‘a terrible sight’.

“I didn’t go back to Allamanches until about 1960, and I didn’t expect to be moved,” he told the BBC on the 70th anniversary of D-Day.

“But when I did go back and stood on the beach that I’d last seen covered in bodies, and saw children building sandcastles, I wept. And that’s when I decided to write the song.”