A Whangamata D-Day veteran is to receive one of the highest honours awarded to those who survived the Normandy landings, which 70 years ago marked the unfolding of World War II.

Fred Amess is one of five Kiwi residents who survived the 1944 Normandy landings and is still alive to be gifted the prestigious Legion d'Honneur – the National Order of the Legion of Honour.

Whangamata's Fred Amess is one of five New Zealand-based survivors of 1944's Normandy landings still alive to receive the prestigious Legion d'Honneur. Photo: Facebook.

'I'm thrilled,” says the 90-year-old. 'I'm really excited about it. I think it's great of the French Government to remember us all.

'They did issue a few after the war to the New Zealand Navy. I think there were about 65 issued to people who were in the NZ division of the Royal Navy.”

Fred was serving in the war with the British Royal Navy on D-Day – June 6, 1944 – when Allied troops stormed German defences on the beaches of Normandy in France to open the way to Germany from the West.

The day saw initiation of the Western Allied effort to liberate mainland Europe from German occupation during WWII.

Fellow D-Day veterans from Tauranga Stephen Garraway, John Hillier and George Woottham and Waihi's George Hall can also apply for the Legion d'Honneur.

The French order, established by Napoleon Bonaparte on May 19, 1802, is the highest decoration in France.

Fred says at age 17 he joined the Home Guard in 1941 before signing up for the British Royal Navy one year later.

'As soon as I completed my seamanship training, I was put in combined operations command to train on landing craft.

'I was on a landing craft tank – LCT611. That was what I was on, on D-Day.”

Serving in the British Royal Navy until 1946, Fred says he joined because he didn't want to be conscripted into the army.

'My father was in the First World War in the army; and he didn't talk much about it. But he told me enough to make me not want to join.

'Although I did get the experience in the Home Guard, I didn't like the idea of working round with a rifle.”

In 1951 Fred moved to New Zealand to return to his pre-navy career as a builder. He worked with geothermal investigations in Mangakino and Taupo before retiring at Whangamata in 1959.

Fred and fellow veterans will receive the honour once their application forms are processed by New Zealand's Ministry of Defence, and their details are forwarded to French authorities.