Jim Radford, 90, was inspired to write after being “moved to tears” by a return trip to France in 1969. Now his haunting ballad,The Shores Of Normandy, is on track to dethrone the pop duo’s hit I Don’t Care on the 75th anniversary of the landings. Jim, who is the youngest known D-Day veteran, was serving as a 15-year-old “galley boy” aboard a tugboat on June 6, 1944. He said: “It was a very hard song for me to write because it meant reliving very harrowing experiences.

“I hadn’t realised that, without knowing how I’d done it, I’d managed to convey that emotional impact to other people.

“I was very surprised that large numbers of people had contacted me to say they had been moved by it.”

Mr Radford wrote the song after an emotional return to Arromanches-les-Bains in Normandy in 1969.

He said: “Standing on the beach at Arromanches 25 years later brought it all back to me. I was moved. I was moved to tears by it. I thought, ‘I must record this’.”

Mr Radford, who was born in Hull and now lives in Lewisham, southeast London, was a galley boy on Merchant Navy tug Empire Larch.

His ship was one of the first to arrive in Normandy to help build the Mulberry Harbour.

Money raised from the single will go to the British Normandy Memorial, a sculpture recording the names of the 22,442 troops under British command who died there.

See www.normandymemorialtrust.org for how to download the track.

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