The story of Lancing D-Day veteran Ted Hunt , 100

He was going to be a Thames waterman, transporting passengers up and down the river. They knew this because the family had been watermen since 1670.

One of the sons of Ted’s great-great-great grandfather had won the Doggett’s Coat and Badge race in 1832, the ultimate bragging rights for anyone in the field.

So when Ted began training as a waterman at the age of 15, that was to be expected.

What his family probably did not expect was what came next. On October 12, 1939, a month after war broke out, Ted and his friends made their way to Surrey Docks to enlist.

“They asked for my date of birth and I said 1920,” the 100-year-old said. “They said I had to be 20. I came out and said: ‘They won’t have me, I’m too young’. I knew they’d all call me a chicken. So the next day I went, added a year to my age, and they let me in.”

Ted had signed up on Friday the 13th, horrifying his mother. But this, he said, was actually his first stroke of luck in life.

Ted during the Second World War

“Because I joined on the 13th I was sent to Norway,” Ted said.

“If I joined on the 12th I would have been in a different company killed on the way from Dunkirk.”

In April 1940 Ted arrived in Norway as part of the 49th Infantry Division’s Royal Engineers, known as the Polar Bears.

Tasked with taking the port of Narvik from the Nazis, his company was ordered to clear the fields in nearby Evenskjer for planes to land.

“We cleared the snow and learned to give Norwegian horses orders,” he said.

“Each day a single Junkers 88 bomber would come over the mountains opposite the fjord, aimed, and always missed.

“It would fly over us at treetop height and you could see the silhouette of the pilot.”

On the day the airstrip was finished, disaster struck.

“We saw another German plane and this time she hit the HMS Curlew, which was guarding us,” he said. “She staggered ashore and one of our sappers had a camera and took a photograph. He sold them for a shilling each back home.

“We saw a squadron of German bombers coming towards us. I thought I was going to die. I thought they couldn’t miss.

Ted said he thought he was going to die in Norway

“But the Hurricanes came and they began fighting. I saw two planes brought down.”

Narvik having been captured, Ted was tasked with doing as much damage to the harbour as possible before British forces fled back home.

“One of the officers knew I was a waterman and asked ‘What do you think Hunt?,” Ted said.

“I said we should blow up the right side of the quay so the crane would fall over. But the quay wasn’t destroyed.

“Then we retreated back to Evenskjer and were told to burn our sleeping bags. We boarded the Lancastria home. I slept on deck.”

Arriving back in Scotland, Ted helped build military ports across the country.

A sergeant major by the age of 23, he even had a hated stint in the War Office – “I wasn’t an in-tray, out-tray person,” he said.

But after a visit from a Royal Engineers officer he was soon back where he belonged.

Ted was promoted to captain and placed in charge of 15 hardy Rhino ferries tasked with transporting vehicles to Gold Beach in the D-Day landings.

He still speaks with awe about the planning that went into it. “These amazing machines were made up of 180 steel boxes,” he said. “When they hit mines they would only lose a few boxes and keep going.”

This was a real possibility in the landings. Nazi General Erwin Rommel, in charge of the defence of occupied France, had placed 70,000 mines on wooden logs along Normandy’s beaches.

Ted commanded 15 Rhino ferries in the D-Day landings

By the time of the invasion on June 6, 1944, many of these had become dislodged. Ted still proudly insists none of his ferries would have been hit if this was not the case.

When the day came and Ted’s force departed for Gold Beach, the first few hours were frantic. “A lot of landing craft had wrecked already,” he said. “Men had their eardrums burst from the noise. I could duck because there was lots of metal.

“But a shell splinter hit me in the middle of my forehead. Any lower and I would have been blind, any bigger and I wouldn’t be here.”

A second stroke of luck.

Landing in the small town of Ver-sur-Mer, Ted’s Rhinos made it to shore and unloaded their vehicles.

“We unloaded and it was ‘go, go, go.’” he said. “Then one of the Bren Carriers would turn around and give us a good shove.”

After a few days the fighting moved on and the mammoth task of constructing the temporary Mulberry harbour in Gold Beach began.

In its first four months 440,000 tonnes of supplies and 3,000 military units were unloaded on the beach alone.

“Everything the Army needed from bombs to toilet rolls,” Ted beamed. “Everybody knows about those blasted tanks which sank and killed so many good men. But nobody knows about the big success.”

Ted was taken to the Worthing War Memorial in a disinfected black cab

Ted still had one final task before the war was over. In the Netherlands, the Second Army was making the push towards Germany. But it had a few obstacles in its way, namely the rivers Meuse, Rhine and Weser.

So Ted was sent to help the army find the best way to cross the waterways. He soon struck up a friendship with Lieutenant Constant Lambrechtsen, a Dutch engineer, and the duo would go on risky scouting missions to find the best places to cross.

“He was a very brave man,” Ted said.

“If we were captured, I would have been made a prisoner of war.

“But the Netherlands had surrendered to Germany so Constant would have been considered a terrorist and shot. He knew that but he took the risk.”

In February 1945 a floating Bailey bridge engineered by the pair was opened across the Meuse. At more than 4,000 feet long it was the longest constructed during the war.

Ted left the Second Army shortly after it crossed the Weser in April.

After a haunting stint in liberated Rotterdam once the war had finished, he was promoted to major and put in charge of a company before being sent back to London.

Ted with Taxi Charity driver Mike Hughes, who has driven him across Europe

The Netherlands was his last wartime experience. But it could have turned out differently. Losing a coin toss to another company commander over who got to take two weeks’ leave, he stayed on duty in London while the war in Asia raged on.

When an officer said one of the two commanders would be sent to Burma, he asked where the other had gone. Ted said he was on leave. So the other commander was sent to Burma. He died in a flying accident.

With his war over, Ted married Vera, a baker’s daughter from Essex.

He began teaching navigation and watermanship at a London college in 1948, a career he continued for the rest of his working life.

In the Seventies he was appointed a Royal Waterman and soon got a letter from Buckingham Palace.

The Queen’s Bargemaster Bert Barry was retiring and Ted was one of six Royal Waterman in consideration for the top post.

As Ted put it: “I couldn’t have had a better interview.”

The official meant to interview him had been taken ill. His replacement? Colonel Sir John Johnson, who had served in the Second Army and crossed over Ted’s bridges.

The two even had a good-natured debate on which river the Allies crossed last – it was the Weser, Ted insisted. He was given the job in 1978, the first ever waterman to do it.

Ted as the Queen's Bargemaster

“For years the job had gone to barge builders, men who had no difficulty in running to the Queen when she wanted them,” he said.

“At last, one of our own. My father never got over it.”

Among other perks, the post meant an invitation to the Queen’s Christmas parties, a source of delight for Vera.

“I used to say: ‘Calm down love, you’re still a baker’s daughter,’” Ted joked.

Retiring from the post in 1990, he was made a Member of the Victorian Order.

Ted now lives in Lancing. Vera died ten years ago after 67 years of happy marriage.

His sister Em died in Herne Bay, Kent, last month at the age of 104. He has not left the house in two months because, as he says, “my daughters want me to make it to 101”.

So that meant no annual trip to Normandy to commemorate D-Day this year.

Instead longtime Taxi Charity volunteer Mike Hughes, who has chauffeured Ted around Europe, drove him to Worthing War Memorial on Saturday in a disinfected cab to pay his respects.