A D-Day veteran has told former comrades that a special voyage marking 75 years since the Normandy landings may be their “last chance” to remember fallen friends together.

Chelsea pensioner George Skipper, 95, urged former Allied soldiers to fill more than 100 spaces left on a chartered ship which will carry them across the Channel in June.

Mr Skipper, who was awarded France’s Legion d’Honneur in 2015 for his courage during the 1944 invasion, said on Thursday: “Get on that boat and think you’re lucky to be on it because there’s a lot of people that didn’t make it.

“Every time I go to events I think, ‘where’s Tommy’? They’re all passing away. It must be the last chance.”

George Skipper at his home in the Royal Hospital Chelsea
George Skipper at his home in the Royal Hospital Chelsea (Stefan Rousseau/PA)

The Royal British Legion is asking friends and families of any veterans to tell them about the fully paid-for trip aboard the MV Boudicca, with applications closing on Monday March 4.

The ship will leave Dover on June 2 and head to events in Poole and Portsmouth, before crossing the Channel in time for commemorations in Normandy on June 6.

Seventy-five years earlier, Mr Skipper, newly married and 20 years old, arrived on Normandy’s Gold Beach as soldiers were cut down by gunfire and landmines.

After jumping into neck-deep water, he helped men who could not swim before advancing forward under a storm of bullets – acts which later saw him awarded France’s top military honour.

The east Londoner said: “When the French president gave me the medal I said, ‘it’s too late, we lost too many men’.

“I had my gun in my hand and just went forward. A lot got shot down but I was lucky. I must’ve done something good in my life.

“D-Day was a very important time in my life and I want to go back whilst I can to remember and to pay tribute to the friends and comrades that I lost.

“When I go back I see what we achieved and what we fought for.”

On June 6 1944, more than 150,000 British, American and Canadian forces landed on five beaches along the heavily fortified French coast.

The huge invasion ultimately led to the liberation of western Europe from Nazi occupation.

Some 192 veterans have already signed up for the trip, but there is space for up to 300 on the ship, which is equipped with walk-in showers and accessible rooms and equipment for the elderly, the Royal British Legion said.

Each gets door-to-door travel for themselves and a guest or carer, funded by a grant from the Royal British Legion and the Ministry of Defence and Arena travel.

Mr Skipper said he would be taking a “lovely, marvellous friend” with him, adding: “It can’t come quick enough.

“It will be a great memory for me to think about the people who didn’t make it.”

The application form can be downloaded at www.britishlegion.org.uk/community/d-day-75/