A QUARTERMASTER who served during the Second World War and stormed Gold Beach on D-Day, Eric Steele, has died at the age of 98.

Eric Burton Steele had been a platoon sergeant in the lead up to the landings, but was made quartermaster with A company of the 1st Battalion Hampshire Regiment just three weeks before D-Day after another man went sick.

Before being sent to Normandy he had already served in Crete and Italy. The Army granted Eric leave in February 1944 to marry his partner Doris in Bournemouth.

The couple tied the knot on Valentine’s Day.

Four months later he was involved with the landings in France and he went on to end the war as a quartermaster in Allied-occupied Berlin.

Speaking to the Daily Echo about D-Day in 2014 to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the landings, Eric could recall the defences the Germans had assembled on the French beaches.

After successfully making it onto the beaches, Eric was responsible for feeding and equipping his company.

“We were going at sort of a half-tide and there were these massive steel structures with tether mines on,” he said.

“The Germans thought we might go in at high water and the boats would have hit them, but going in at half-tide, low-ish water, which was a bit rough, meant that we could see what was going on. But it was still very hectic.

“There were tanks on fire that hadn’t got ashore. Lt Cl Nelson Smith, CO, was knocked out on the beach there. It was all hell let loose.

“We stopped. There was a pillbox opening up, somebody had to knock it out, and I think a tank came up and knocked it out.

“We were then able to get our breath back and it was from then that we really got organised. I had my transport. Rations were coming in on trucks.”

Eric arranged to supply the troops with blankets for the cold night and tools to enlarge their trenches.

He remembers his company later reaching Bayeux with little opposition, but said that he came too close to being a casualty of the war himself, when he was going up in a Bren gun carrier.

“A bullet came over the top of the back of my head, bounced off, and just nicked the nose of my driver,” he said.

After their wedding at Bournemouth Register Office in Old Christchurch Road during the Second World War, Eric and Doris went on to enjoy a long, happy marriage.

In 2014 the couple, who were living in Iford at the time, celebrated their platinum anniversary and told the Daily Echo the secret to a successful marriage was sharing “a laugh and a joke”.

Reflecting on their Valentine’s wedding and 70 years of marriage, Eric said: “We didn’t know it was Valentine’s Day. That wasn’t such a big thing in those days, people didn’t go around buying a dozen red roses and things like that back then.

“But it’s good because it means I have no excuse whatsoever for forgetting either Valentine’s Day or our anniversary.

“We get on very well together. It was love at first sight, no doubt about that.”

Eric and Doris had three children, Carol, Michael and Barry, as well as five grandchildren, ten great grandchildren and three great great grandchildren,

Together they made several journeys to the other side of the world to visit their daughter and her family in Australia.

Eric Steele passed away peacefully on Thursday, April 19, aged 98.

His funeral service will be held at Bournemouth Crematorium at 2.15pm on Thursday, May 10.

Family flowers only, but donations, if desired, for Marie Curie may be sent care of Deric Scott Funeral Services 755 Christchurch Road, Bournemouth, BH7 6AN.