A Regina man who was among hundreds of thousands of Allied troops fighting on D-Day was thinking back to that titanic Second World War battle on Wednesday.

Harold Hague, shown here at a 2005 veterans event, was a signalman with the Royal Canadian Navy during the Second World War.
(CBC)

June 6 is the 63rd anniversary of D-Day, the beginning of the massive invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe by Canada, Britain and the United States.

On that day, Harold Hague was a 22-year-old signalman with the Royal Canadian Navy who was serving aboard a minesweeper off the coast of Normandy, France.

"It was a memorable day ... I'm lying here reminiscing," the 85-year-old Hague said Wednesday in an interview from his Regina home, where he is being treated for pneumonia.

Hague said he saw some awful sights that day as the Allied forces were pounded by the German artillery.

The worst moment, he said, came when a nearby ship was destroyed by an enemy shell, with all hands lost. "It was right in front of my eyes, about half a block away," he said. "It was so surprising. It went down so fast."

Historians call it the greatest seaborne invasion of all time, but it came at a terrible cost. On June 6, 1944, 340 Canadians were killed, 574 were wounded and 47 were captured at Juno Beach.