‘I said many prayers’: D-day veteran on horror and

Jake Ruser, 99, served as a frontline medic from the Normandy landings 80 years ago to the end of the war. He says his comrades would be ‘very disturbed’ at the rise of authoritarianism in the US

Still just a teenager, combat medic Jake Ruser clung to the netting, knowing that one slip could be fatal as he came down from a ship to a landing craft bound for Normandy. “They had these big cargo nets draped over the side of the ship,” he recalls with a clarity that defies the decades. “I had to climb down these nets and had my equipment with me, which made it harder.

“As the wave would pass under, the big ship would rise up and the little boat would drop down. So you had to time it between those few seconds to get from that big ship cargo net into the boat without falling. If you slipped, you went between the two and got crushed.”