D-Day veteran Cecil Newton has died aged 101

mirek.gosney@newburynews.co.uk

Published: 10:59, 02 May 2025

| Updated: 19:07, 05 May 2025

One of the last survivors of the Normandy beach landings in June 1944 has died.

Cecil Newton, aged 101, died peacefully in his sleep at 5pm yesterday (Thursday), his family has told newburytoday.

D-Day veteran Cecil Newton, aged 101, has died

Mr Newton, from Aldbourne, landed with the first wave of British forces storming Gold Beach on D-Day.

He had been due to attend the VE Day 80th anniversary commemorations planned in the village this Sunday (May 4), where the mayor and schoolchildren from Creully Sur Seulles, a town in France he helped liberate, would have met him.

Cecil, front left, with his Sherman tank crew on the Dutch-German border in November 1944

Pupils from the Cecil Newton Primary School greeting Cecil at Creully

Mr Newton served more than three years in the Second World War. He was badly wounded in a deadly ambush in Germany, which ended his military career early.

After the war, Mr Newton qualified as a quantity surveyor and moved to Swindon. He then bought a plot of land in Aldbourne and built the house where he lived until his death.

Cecil Newton with reporter Mirek at the school named after him in Normandy

He travelled to Normandy almost every year since the war to pay his respects to his fallen comrades. More than 100 men in his regiment never came home.

Newburytoday joined Mr Newton when he travelled to Normandy for the 80th anniversary commemorations of D-Day last year.

His family are now in mourning.

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