THE single-handed capture and destruction of a tank was just "part of the job", according one paratrooper who took part in the D-Day invasion of Europe.

Ernest Johnson and two of his friends had been scouting the source of a missile barrage which had killed several of their comrades, so they could give RAF pilots the coordinates to destroy it.

It was then they were forced to hide, as the tank thundered up to where they had stopped, behind a hedgerow in German-occupied Normandy.

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Mr Johnson, now aged 90, said: "We laid low, then the tank stopped, right against where we were. We thought it had seen us, but it hadn't.

"I got a grenade and said, 'cover me'. I ran round the tank and jumped on its back. The tank commander turned and saw me with this grenade. He went grey!

"I gestured to him that I would drop the grenade inside, then said 'Everyone out!'. Him and three blokes got out and we marched them down to HQ as prisoners.

"Before I left, I dropped the grenade into the tank and it went up like an atomic bomb."

Mr Johnson, of Hartshill, had joined the Royal Warwickshire Regiment in 1941, then was asked to join 8 Para – the 8th Parachute Battalion, formed in 1943.

His first jump in action, was into Normandy, at 1am on D-Day, June 6, 1944.

"We ran into heavy flak over the French coast. There was a lot going on. We took a lot of fire and there were aircrafts crashing in flames," he said.

"I was sat by the Dakota door, it was quite a sight. The whole of the French coast looked red.

"We jumped out and my landing was fine. Then I spent the night trying to meet up with the rest of the regiment, because we had all landed in different spots.

"The next day we were able to meet up at the rendezvous point. We were held up in a wood and after a while the Germans found out we were there and started hitting us with everything; artillery, mortar bombs, night and day. Our job was to block the Germans from reaching the troops landing on the beach."

Mr Johnson, who had been promoted to the rank of corporal after capturing the tank, next dropped into Germany itself, in 1945, as the Allies made their final push to end the war.

He said: "Resistance was light, they knew they had lost the war by then. After we got to Germany it all seemed to end very quickly."

Mr Johnson was de-mobbed in 1946, and returned to his wife, Florence, and daughter Sylvia, as well as a job as a brick layer, building pot banks.

He added: "I'm no hero, I just did what I was supposed to do, we all did. It was your job."

Audio from Ernest Jones will appear here shortly