LAST Thursday marked the anniversary of D-Day. Fifty-eight years earlier, the Allied invasion force had landed in Normandy as the long-awaited Operation Overlord got underway; by midnight, 155,000 troops were ashore, for the loss of 9,000 men.

Among the landing force was Joseph Henry 'Harry' Stubbs. Born in York in November 1907, he was called up into the Army in November 1939 and joined the Royal Army Service Corp, becoming a reluctant lance corporal.

After that, his family only saw him intermittently through the rest of the war. And it is only now that his daughter Ann Tiffany has begun to realise what he experienced on D-Day.

Ann, who now lives in Prince George, Canada, was born in Mansfield Street, York. It was hit during the 1942 air raid, but by then the family had moved out to Harington Avenue - although the family was affected by the bombing.

"I remember vividly the flames of the Guildhall outlining the enduring towers of York Minster," she said.

"It had been that night also that a bomb had dropped close to my grandmother's house, she was ill with a stroke and the shock of the bomb so close had caused a deterioration in her condition and she died within a few days, another victim of the war."

Ann trained as a nurse at York County Hospital, and fondly remembers dancing at the De Grey Rooms to the music of John Barry.

Ann recently returned to York for a holiday and, as part of the same break, visited Normandy.

"It wasn't until I mentioned to my mother that my cousin and I were going to Normandy to visit the beaches, that she told me that dad had landed there on June 7, 1944," she said.

"What a strange sensation that was for me, my quiet, gentle father being part of the greatest invasion force in history."

Ann described her father as a quiet, gentle man. He was married to Ivy and they had four daughters and a son.

"On Sunday mornings he would take us for walks around the bar walls while mum stayed home to cook the lunch.

"We played knights in armour shooting imaginary arrows through the arrow slits in the walls and hide and seek when dad would hide behind an abutment and jump out at us.

"He was a handsome man who always walked straight and tall and dressed smartly, his cloth cap set at a jaunty angle." Later in his life he contracted lung cancer. A month before his 77th birthday "he died quietly in my mother's arms, a very brave man".

Ann has written a piece about her journey to the Normandy beaches, and she has kindly allowed us to reproduce this extract.

DAD had been the one who played tag and hide and seek with us when we were young, the kind man who seldom raised his voice in anger. It was strange to think of him in this other role, the soldier, one of the thousands of men who had landed on the Normandy beaches.

With this new knowledge came the feeling of my visit being a personal pilgrimage; I wanted to see where dad had been while he was away from us, I felt a need to walk where he had walked and somehow to feel a connection with him stretching over the past 58 years.

On studying the guide book I knew the British had landed on Gold and Sword beaches while the Canadians had come ashore at Juno beach, the Americans at Omaha and Utah.

We stood on the cliff above Gold beach and looked down. Nestled under the cliffs lies the small fishing village of Asnelles, demolished during the invasion and which has now been rebuilt.

A young soldier walked along, part of a group of soldiers touring the beaches. Would he take our photo overlooking Gold beach we asked? I wanted to show my mother where dad had been.

"I told him my father had landed there on June 7th. "It looks so peaceful now, it's hard to believe the horror of it all," I say. He nods his head and we stand side by side for a moment looking down onto the beach each with our own thoughts, two strangers joined together for a moment in time before moving on.

I thought again of that young soldier as I stood at the entrance to the American cemetery later that day. The sight of so many crosses is unbelievably poignant; they stand row on row, more than nine thousand of them, each cross representing a young life lost. Four nursing sisters also lie there.

I remembered the young soldier on the cliff top standing with me in silence as we looked down at the peaceful waves lapping the shore beneath us. Each cross is one such young life I thought, the price of war is too high. It has to stop.

There is a memorial in the cemetery at Colleville the words read, "Look how many of them there were, Look how young they were, They died for our freedom, Hold back your tears and keep silent."

The British cemetery is somehow more comforting, there are flowers at the bases of the gravestones, messages engraved by mothers and fathers, sisters, wives, "no greater love hath man", and the particularly touching, "Our lad, At rest". There are others for whom no recognition was possible, they are simply, "Known to God."

As I wandered in the war museums at Caen and Bayeaux, I pored over the photographs lining the walls; they are of men like my dad, family men, youngsters, too young to have been there.

I search the faces thinking to see dad among his comrades. I realise how tired I am of conflict, of people unable or unwilling to be at peace with one another. I am tired of our leaders, our old men, sending our young ones to war to do battle for an ideal that has more to do with money and power than idealism.

What must we do then about this problem? I think we must go to the beaches of Normandy symbolically, we must light our candles and turn our faces to the sea. We must tell our old men to stop sending our young people to war. Tell them to find a better way

Updated: 10:33 Monday, June 10, 2002