'It's just life mate': Bill Edgar reflects on D-Day and his adventurous life

79 years after he helped the British Navy launch Sherman tanks onto a Nazi-occupied French beach as part of the WWII operation that would become known as D-Day, the now 98-year-old said all he'd done and experienced was "just life, mate".

Bill was conscripted to the British Navy from his homeland in Scotland in May 1943 as an 18-year-old.

He told his officers he was an apprentice butcher because he didn't want to end up in the engine room of the ships.

"If I'd put diesel mechanic I would've ended up in the engine room and I didn't want that," he said.

So Bill became a deck officer - a job he said "you can't bullshit in".

He was one of 13 crew aboard landing craft LCT 797 carrying seven Sherman Tanks and two tonnes of explosives when it approached Utah Beach in the early hours of June 6, 1944.

He'd been up the night before with 25 frogman - trained military scuba divers - blowing up obstacles in the shallows to clear the way.

The then 19-year-old Sub-Lieutenant was responsible for loading and unloading the ship. There was no time to think about the overall success of the operation, it's importance to the war or the legacy it would leave.

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"You've got your job to do - you're running the ship, you're getting them off the ship, you're getting the ramp up and pulling off the beach and getting the hell out of there," he said.

"They were shooting at us the whole time, but we just dropped the tanks.

"We had a job to do and we did it."

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A close mate was killed during the assault on Pegasus Bridge 100 kilometres east.

"I'm just lucky to still be alive," Bill said.

"We've all gone through the same sort of thing."

After D-Day, Bill served in India then Sumatra before he was part of the British fleet that liberated Singapore in 1945.

His biggest regret in life was leaving the Navy in 1947.

"I've regretted it always," he said.

But it wasn't Bill who made the decision to leave.

He contracted malaria and needed shore leave to recover. He was put ashore in Wollongong and the ship moved on. His time in the navy was finished.

Yet for Bill, there were more adventures still to be had.

He returned to his engineering and technical skills working for Ferguson Tractors. The skills equipped him for two 12-month stints as lead engineer in Antarctica, responsible for powering Mawson's Hut and keeping the camp running. Lights, power, heating and cooling - it was all under Bill's oversight.

"There's no corner shop there mate," he said.

He then transferred the skills into videography, working for the ABC film unit for 10 years ensuring crews had power and lighting in the field.

When Bill looks back on his life, he said it did not feel particularly special, it was just the life he lived.

"You see some terrible things," he said.

"But that's life mate."