Royal Navy hero Stan survived D-Day but was racked with guilt (Image: PA)
Tributes have been paid to a D-Day hero who lived for 80 years racked with guilt after serving the horrors of the Normandy invasion.
Cyril Stanley Ford – known as Stan to his friends – survived a deadly torpedo strike on HMS Fratton that claimed the lives of 31 of his crew mates.
His death at 100 was announced today.
HMS Fratton was struck on August 18, 1944. The explosion was so powerful the gun platform Stan was manning at the time was blown off the ship, with him still strapped to it, and he was launched into the water, unconscious. He woke up floating in the English Channel, fighting to stay alive.
He was rescued, but the horrific injuries he suffered left him walking with callipers for life.
Speaking to the Express about his memories of the Allied invasion Stan, from Bath, Somerset, who was a regular on veterans’ pilgrimages to Northern France, said: “HMS Fratton sank in four minutes, taking with her 31 of a crew of 80.
“I was lucky when so many of my shipmates were not, and I often ask myself, ‘Why me’?
“I will always remember the crew I served with and will keep coming back to Normandy as long as I can do so.”
(L-R) Reginald Pye, Alec Penstone, Jack Quinn, Richard Alfred, Henry Rice, Stan Ford, and Ken Hay (Image: Jonathan Buckmaster)
In 2023 hero Stan returned to Sword Beach alongside his wartime pals to remember their fallen brothers in arms.
There on the shoreline he stood shoulder to shoulder with Ken Hay, Jack Quinn, Henry Rice, Alec Penstone, Reginald Pye, and Richard Aldred – all recipients of France’s Legion of Honour.
Stan, who was just 19 and a year into his naval service, had been standing inside his gun turret when a missile from a German midget submarine hit the ship and the explosion threw him into the air.
He said: “The platform I was operating on detached in the explosion and went over the side with me still in it.
“It was from quite a great height. I came to and I was in the water. There was no sign of the platform, it sank immediately.
“I had to float until this little craft came by and hands came over the side of the boat and pulled me aboard, and then they laid me down and that was it.”
He was taken to a field hospital on Gold Beach suffering a fractured spine and two badly injured legs.
Stan said: “It was actually a soldier in the next bed that helped me come around when he was speaking to me and encouraging me. That was when I started to think about the family and all the people that I knew, and the 31 of my friends and crew members that lost their lives.”
Stan grew up in Bristol, one of 10 children to parents Robert and Margaret. After leaving school he worked in a factory making iron brackets for Anderson air raid shelters and was called up to the Senior Service in 1943.
Richard Palusinski, chairman of the Spirit of Normandy Trust, said: “Stan was the sort of person who attracted people to love him for what he was.
“His personality, his love of life, and the fact that he never let the injuries that he took in the war diminish his sense of humour or enthusiasm.”
Stan takes part in commemorations for the 79th anniversary of D-Day in 2023 (Image: Jonathan Buckmaster)