A WAR hero has received France’s highest honour at a special ceremony in his home town.

Ron Tucker was presented with the Légion d’Honneur by Middlesbrough Mayor Dave Budd at a ceremony in the Town Hall on Thursday (January 28).

Mr Tucker, from Coulby Newham and now in his 80s, joined the army under age by claiming to be 18 when he was just 16.

Determined to do his bit in the fight against the Germans, he joined the Gordon Highlanders and subsequently jumped at the chance to become a paratrooper.

After months of hard training his battalion was given an important task on D-Day to take out a battery of guns overlooking one of the landing beaches.

Parachuting in under cover of darkness, they were some of the first to land in France as the invasion gathered momentum.

Unfortunately Mr Tucker and many of his comrades were unable to achieve their primary objective, with nearly a third of their number either killed or presumed drowned.

However the survivors fought their way to secondary objectives, going on to prevent German forces attacking the beachhead being formed as troops came ashore, thus allowing the breakout.

Later he fought in the Battle of the Bulge in late 1944 and early 1945 in conditions so cold that one blanket he had slept in snapped as he tried to fold it up.

Mr Tucker was once again at the heart of the action when he was dropped in the Rhine Crossing. Amid heavy casualties he was wounded himself but had a miraculous escape when a cross in his ammunition pouch deflected a bullet.

Cllr Budd said: “Ron is a fine example of a local hero who simply went to war on behalf of his local community and the country as a whole, because he wanted to make a difference."

The French Government has decreed that all veterans who helped liberate France from the Nazis should get the nation's highest honour.