🇳🇿WWII uncovered: New Zealand Flight Lieutenant Maurice Mayston: 485 NZ Spitfire Squadron: Veteran of D-Day.

"We went out in the first light, before the dawn. We were lucky; although there was other cloud the east still had this glow, and we could see down below the darkness of the land and the shiny surface of the sea, and the light was getting better every minute of course, and then dawn broke, and we saw this immense armada of ships in the semi-darkness.

It was awesome, and there were the hundreds and hundreds of landing craft, loaded up with men heading towards the beaches, all in nice neat lines and order. It was awesome, there's no other word really.

And something that we'd been looking for, and here it was happening" - Maurice Mayston interview by Alison Parr. Ministry for Culture and Heritage D-Day Oral History project.

New Zealand spitfire pilot, Flight Lieutenant Maurice Mayston (pictured left) and R.H. Le Tourret back from a fighter sweep over France in the days before D-Day.

"Maurice Mayston was a fighter pilot with 485 NZ Spitfire Squadron.

On D-Day his squadron shot down the first German bomber over the Normandy battlefield, and quickly followed it with a second.

From then until August 1945, Maurice was on continuous active service and was based in France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany.

Mayston was awarded the Legion d'Honneur, France's highest military honour, for service on D-Day and the Normandy Landings." - Ministry for Culture and Heritage

Flight Lieutenant Maurice Colgan Mayston passed away on 20 October 2019 at the age of 98 years old.

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