A former solicitor was among seven D-Day veterans awarded France's top honour - the Legion d'Honneur - during the recent 60th-anniversary events.

Gordon Fleming, 79, from Hove, was among the first arrivals on Sword Beach at the start of the Normandy invasion on 6 June 1944.

He fought with a commando unit that advanced to relieve the airborne forces that had captured Pegasus Bridge, a strategic point.

He was severely wounded later in the campaign during an action at Gonneville in France.

Mr Fleming told reporters: 'I feel I am accepting this on behalf of all those that did not return, very much the rank-and-file rather than the higher-ups, as I was a trooper.'

Other solicitors involved at D-Day included Jack Easton, injured while commanding a minesweeping flotilla in the landings.

His first war injury, received during a valiant attempt to defuse a huge German bomb that landed on Shoreditch in 1940, almost cost him his life and earned him a George Cross.

He retired from the family firm in the City, William Easton & Sons, in the late 1970s and died in 1994, aged 88.

Jeremy Fleming