“There’d be no need for a war now, we’ve got the wrong attitude. It’s disappointing what’s turned out now.”

Mervyn, from Cockfosters, north London, landed on Gold Beach as part of the Allied fight to capture Nazi-occupied France, serving with the Royal Army Ordnance Corps.

His role in the invasion was to help ensure a steady flow of vehicles to supply British Army units fighting their way to Berlin.

But it was at Bergen-Belsen that he witnessed the abject horrors of war and which gave him a sense of foreboding, given the hate swirling today.

Initially, a ​​prisoner of war camp for Allied soldiers, it became a Nazi concentration camp in 1943. British troops liberated the camp on April 15, 1945, finding tens of thousands of starving prisoners and thousands of unburied bodies. It is estimated that 70,000 Jews died there.

Mervyn was greeted with the sight of typhus-ridden and skeletal prisoners still wearing striped prison uniforms.

He said: “I could almost say [going to war] was a crusade, if that’s not the wrong word. To me, this had a purpose. It wasn’t just a game or passing the time it was to put the Germans out of action as long as possible.

“We knew what was happening. [We] didn’t know the extent of it, but we knew they had gas chambers. They were killing people, shooting them, hanging them.”

Mervyn, already a recipient of the Legion d’honneur – the highest and most prestigious French national order of merit, was awarded the BEM for his school talks about the Holocaust remembrance and his wartime service.

Around 384,000 British military personnel died during the Second World War across all branches of the Armed Forces and Merchant Navy.

Each year Mervyn and his chums visit the British Normandy Memorial, the stunning edifice overlooking Gold Beach where he waded ashore on D-Day and which records the names of 22,442 soldiers who fell on June 6, 1944 and the three-month Battle of Normandy that followed.

However, his war was nearly over before it started, with his religion almost leading to his arrest and imprisonment.

Before he was due to sail to Normandy, Private Kersh was ordered to see his commanding officer.

He demanded an explanation as to why the 19-year-old soldier was refusing to eat Army rations of tinned beef and vegetables and only surviving on canned peaches. His superiors suspected he was trying to dodge the war by making himself too frail to fight for the liberation of Europe.

He recalled: “I said that was the last thing I wanted to do. I’m Jewish. I didn’t eat anything that wasn’t kosher as far as I could help it.” The charges were dropped.

He said “It took us 14-hours to cross [the Channel] and one of the sailors told me that we were adrift to the west a little. Nevertheless we reached the Normandy beach intended which was codenamed Gold Beach. Our sector was codenamed ‘Jig’ and was the western end of the British line next to the Americans at Omaha Beach. They had suffered enormous casualties being unable to get beyond the beach for safer ground, but the British had cleared their cliffs and when I landed we merely had to ride up the ramp road to the top. I was very fortunate that we landed while the Germans were reeling and before they regrouped.

“At the top of the cliff ramp, in Port-en-Bessin, the villagers cheered us and offered us glasses of wine and flowers as we slowly moved ahead.”

He rose through the ranks to finish his Army career as Acting Warrant Officer, serving in Egypt before being demobbed in 1946.

At the annual Remembrance Day service at the Cenotaph last month, November, Mervyn was joined by fellow D-Day lionhearts Jim Grant, 100, and Henry Rice, 99, to head the parade of veterans.

Mervyn, an ambassador for the Normandy Memorial Trust, said he “absolutely” sees comparisons between now and the period just before the Second World War, adding that Russia is “threatening the West.”

British Jews said Labour’s decision to recognise Palestine had emboldened antisemites, with disturbing polling showing more than half feel now they do not have a long-term future in the UK.

In a survey by the charity Campaign Against Antisemitism, almost half say they do not feel welcome here, while a clear majority have considered leaving the UK because of a surge in antisemitism since the October 7 attacks of 2023, general prejudice against Jews in society, and antisemitism across political parties.

Issuing a defiant message to politicians, Mervyn said: “The top budget should be defence, there’s nothing there for anything else. That’s all there is.

“Defence must come first, second, third, fourth and fifth, because only if you’re strong, you won’t be attacked.”

And he compared today’s Western leaders to weak Neville Chamberlain, whose 1930s appeasement of Hitler failed, saying: “They think they’ve just got to hope and make speeches.

“We’ve got to either have another leader who’s more aggressive, I don’t mean start a war, but aggressive. We’ve got to defend, that’s the first concern.”

Dick Goowin, Vice President of the Taxi Charity for Military Veterans, said: “We are absolutely delighted to congratulate Mervyn on his well-deserved inclusion in the New Year Honours List. Being awarded a British Empire Medal for services to Holocaust education is a fitting recognition of his tireless commitment to ensuring that the lessons of history are never forgotten.

“Mervyn is a much-loved regular on Taxi Charity trips, and it has been a privilege for our volunteers and supporters to spend time with him and hear his powerful story first hand.

“We are incredibly proud to see his dedication and impact recognised in this way, and we send him our warmest congratulations.”