His body may not be as agile as it once was, but his mind remains alert and memories from the war are never far from his thoughts.

“I have lots of stories,” the 96-year-old said.

Out of the box he retrieved six medals from World War II: two stars – one for the Bomber Command and a French and Germany Star, three defence medals and the French Legion Medal – the highest award for a non-French person.

Then followed his original air force tags and uniform signal, a defence dress belt buckle and a few more coins and medals – his most recent from the Trundle RSL Sub-branch acknowledging him as an honourary patron in 2016.

While Phil is originally from Caringbah and has only been living in Trundle for two and a half years with his daughter, he and his family were very touched by the gesture.

Phil was a member of the 15^th Squadron Milden Hall and was a wireless operator in an Avro Lancaster – Britain’s most successful heavy bomber – during World War II.

He was among the Australian air personnel who were involved in D-Day, and he remembers it well.

“I volunteered to join the air force in 1941...and I didn’t tell my parents,” Phil said.

“After three days I thought I better tell my parents, they were upset. My mother started to cry.

“My dad said ‘why did you do that? You were exempt’, because I was going to university to become a veterinary surgeon.

“I was young and silly.”

Phil was also 21 years old at the time.

He was among the 125 men selected to travel to England.

“There were seven on a plane – three Australians and four Englishmen. There was the pilot, navigator, bomb-aimer, wireless operator which was me, engineer and two gunners,” Phil said.

“I was the only one who received all the communications, so all of the instructions had to come through me – what sort of weather it was, what the target was.

“Our mission was to deliver the bomb-aimer to the target.”

Most of their flying was done at night and missions lasted between six and eight hours.

On June 6, 1944 (D-Day) allied forces launched a combined naval, air and land assault on Nazi-occupied France.

The allied landings on the Normandy beaches were the beginning of a long and costly campaign to liberate north-west Europe from German occupation.

“Our job was to cause so much trouble,” Phil said.

“It (the bombings) was to draw people away from Normandy.

“Nobody knew exactly when D-Day was going to happen...it was very stormy…when they went in it was a schmozzle, there were a lot of ships and all the landing craft had to get in as close as possible.

“We all had our jobs to do, we had to tackle the jobs the army couldn’t do. We had to try to clear the way for the army to come through.”

Phil remembers being “hyped up” for the mission and recalls everything he saw and felt that day.

“You’re too busy to be scared, you weren’t brave you just didn’t know what you were doing,” he said.

“We were supposed to bomb at low altitude. On the way there we had to drop the wheels and fly between 300 and 500 feet above the ground, we were flying under the thick cloud.

“The bombs we had were 2000 pounders, now the rule was you weren’t allowed to fly below 1000 feet.”

Phil said they were so close to the explosions they could feel it underneath them, the concussions causing a number of broken ankles.

“Nearly all of us had sprained ankles,” he said. 

Among some near misses and heart-stopping moments was when Phil and his crew witnessed two planes collide in the dense cloud before them.

“There were two Lancasters approaching each other, they were just a few hundred feet in front of us,” he recalled.

“They spotted one another and flew up into the cloud [and collided], they came right down in front of us and into the sea.

“There was a big belch of flames that came from the sea and we flew through that, of course they (the men in the planes) died...we just thought of the crew.”

Of the 125 that were sent away, Phil said only 40 were able to make it home.

“They weren’t sound either, they were injured,” he said.

Phil was injured internally when a 4000 pound bomb rolled on top of him in the pit when the crew was loading their plane.

“They got us to load our own bombs, we’d load the trolley with the bombs so I jumped into the pit but I forgot the bottom was ice and I slipped.

“The big bomb rolled back on me and I couldn’t get out, I had to wait until someone came to get me. I was bleeding internally.

“As it happened there was a blizzard so we didn’t do any flying for 48 hours – in that time the bleeding stopped...I didn’t report sick because if you do you lose your crew.”

At the end of the war, Phil remembered when the English Parliament wanted to recognise air crews for their efforts.

“It was only fighter pilots because they believed the bombers caused too much damage and didn’t deserve a medal,” he said.

But following a lengthy application process, Phil managed to receive his medal two years later.

In 2014 he was one of seven men who travelled to France and was presented the French Legion Medal for his involvement in the D-Day bombings.

Every year Phil tries to participate in Anzac Day commemorations, and depending on his health, he hopes to attend Trundle’s services this year.