Funeral held for ‘humble’ D-Day veteran April 21, 2021, 4:56 pm Pallbearers carry the coffin of D-Day veteran Albert Lilly into the chapel at the Oaks Havant Crematorium in Hampshire, for his funeral service. Picture date: Wednesday April 21, 2021. The funeral has taken place for a 97-year-old veteran who landed in Normandy on D-Day and helped build an airfield in just three days to support invading Allied troops. Albert Lilly was born in Portsmouth in 1923 and tried to join the Army when the Second World War broke out, but was told to come back in two years because he was just 16. When he did enrol, he joined the 16th Airfield Construction Group of the Royal Engineers, and he set sail from Lowestoft on June 4 1944 for the D-Day landing, but was left waiting in the Solent for a day because of bad weather.