Municipal Charities are sad to announce that almshouse resident, Phil Sweet, who was 100 years old and one of the last survivors of the D Day landings, sadly died last week. 

Born on 25 October 1924 and died on 30 April 2025, Phil led a landing craft on Gold Beach on D Day (6 June 1944).

He was the longest and oldest resident of one of the Municipal Charities Almshouses in Stratford-upon-Avon.

In an interview with Midlands Today on his 100th birthday Phil mentioned that amazingly his father had survived the Gallipoli campaign. Last year Phil took part in the 80th Anniversary of D Day at the National Arboretum where he met the Duchess of Edinburgh and was interviewed by Sky News

https://news.sky.com/video/d-day-80th-anniversary-veteran-recalls-how-beached-ship-was-used-as-prisoner-of-war-camp-13149036

Phil recalls the following about his war time experience:

“I was sent to a place called Lochailort in the Highlands where I did six weeks of hefty nautical and ability training. Those six weeks were the toughest I have experienced in my life both physically and mentally. At the end of each week you had exams and if you were not good enough you would be dropped. But I lasted and was appointed an officer then sent to Troon for officer training for another six weeks and then appointed to a tank landing craft ready for the D-Day landings.

The war had been going for quite a considerable period of time for my training was in readiness for the D-Day landings the time of which we did not know then.

I was part of the initial wave that landed at the village of La Rivière as part of the Gold Beach landings. I was in a flotilla which were the first to go into the beach with two tanks on top of each other on the landing craft so that they could bombard the beach with shells as they were coming in to land. We didn’t lose anybody that day although the landing craft was damaged by the underwater objects as we were going in.

Then following the landing we were offloading equipment to the beaches and whilst doing so I had to go to the tented hospital at Bayeux with suspected peritonitis which turned out to be appendicitis.

I was sent to Plymouth to HMS Foliot, running all the movement of landing craft. We were tropicalizing (adding refrigeration and air conditioning) landing craft ready for the Far East but of course that collapsed because they dropped the atomic bomb.”

Along with the trustees, residents and staff of Municipal Charities, all the team at The Almshouse Association extend their sincerest condolences to Phil’s family.

Phil leaves a daughter and son and family.

posted 7 May 2025