The first female reporter at the 1944 Normandy landings has talked about her experiences in a special feature in the Greenwich Mercury.

And the doyen of foreign correspondents Barbara Wace, celebrating her 93rd birthday, spoke out firmly against war and the glorification of war.

Joined by friends and family, and a group of anti-war writers from Hastings, Barbara, from Blackheath, revealed she was particularly opposed to a series of special events organised by English Heritage, which will re-enact the events of the Norman conquest.

“War is the last resort – it’s a sign of failure and there are no winners. There should be continual talks between influential people to find ways of preventing wars. The Norman Conquest, in particular, led to centuries of debate about the rights and wrongs,” she told readers.

Barbara was 36 when she became the first British woman to report on the Allied invasion. She knew the importance of the story but had no idea she was making history herself. Her brief was to cover the arrival in France of the first American WACs (Women’s Army Corps).

“It was all very, very frightening,” Barbara recalled.

“Anybody with any sense was frightened. This was my sole experience of war reporting. My main concern as a journalist has always been people.

“In France in WW2, the effects on the people – how they reacted, the consequences to them – was what mattered to me. The main concerns – the justification for the allied landings – was to liberate Europe. It’s impossible to think about other things when day-to-day survival is the main issue.”

After the war, Barbara became a freelance writer and photographer, continuing to travel the world and write about what she saw for the next 30 years. In 1988, by then the last journalist living in Fleet Street, she became unable to climb the 96 stairs to her flat and had to move out.

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