Thursday marks the 80th anniversary of D-Day, a major turning point in World War II.

One local veteran can recall the events of that day with great detail. 

Godfrey Anderson turns 100 years old in July and 80 years ago was a lead hand on one of the Royal Navy Ships that carried U.S. Troops and supplies from Portsmouth, across the English Channel to Northern France on June 6, 1944, also known as D-Day.

"Started loading our ship with American Troops, they came on board and we took them over and dropped them off in Normandy.", said Anderson.

Close to 2500 Royal Navy personnel were killed during the battle of Normandy--Godfrey says he's fortunate to be able to tell the story.

"We didn't expect to come back," he added.

He says his ship was there for around ten days but left before storms rolled in and that the journey back was anything but easy.

"My ship was too slow to go in the convoy so traveled strictly by ourselves and we didn't know if we'd hit another submarine or something.", said Godfrey, posing the threat of being sunk with no one around to help them.

Prior to D-Day and the Battle of Normandy, Anderson delivered Rangers to the West Coast of Italy.

D-Day marked the first day of operations and ultimately led to the liberation of France, and weakened Germany's stronghold on Europe.