VITAL battles which had a crucial effect on the outcome of the war were also being fought elsewhere in the run-up to D-Day.

Allied troops were locked in a terrible battle with well-organised and determined German soldiers entrenched in the hilltop Benedictine monastery at Monte Cassino, 100 miles south east of Rome.

Considered by many to be one of the strongest defensive positions in military history, the battle lasted from January to May 1944.

The Allied victory allowed troops to break the Gustav Line and take Rome on June 4, just two days before D-Day.

Leslie Hilton, 84, of Crescent Drive, Petts Wood, was a corporal with the Lancashire Fusiliers and fired a heavy-duty Bren machine gun at German positions during one of the Second World War's bloodiest battles.

The grandfather-of-three said: "If we had lost the battle, there would have been fewer German troops tied up in Italy and they could have been used against the D-Day boys.

"We kept trying to get up the hill but the fire we came under was so bad we were forced back. They were just picking us off."

Up to 250,000 men were killed or wounded in the battle and Mr Hilton says the carnage was almost hard to believe.

The former post office worker said: "I remember comrades falling down dead all around me but you couldn't run and you just had to keep going."