An 104-year-old British 'hero in the shadows' has been awarded the highest honour France can bestow.
At the UK's commemoration event in Ver-sur-Mer in Normandy, French President Emmanuel Macron bent down to pin the Legion d'honneur medal on Christian Lamb, before kissing the Second World Warhero on both cheeks.
Mrs Lamb was posted in secret to Whitehall in London at the start of 1944, and created detailed maps that guided the crews of landing craft on D-Day.
At the ceremony, Mr Macron then said: 'You were, in your own way, among those figures in the shadow of D-Day.
'You were not there in person but you guided each step they took.'
French President Emmanuel Macron delivering a speech at Ver-sur-Mer in Normandy where he thanked Christian lamb for her work for D-Day
The French president pinned the highest honour France can bestow, the Legion d'honneur, on the navy cardigan of the Second World War veteran.
After Mr Macron delivered his speech the King and Queen went over to greet the 104-year-old veteran who had created maps for troops for the ground invasion
Her dedicated years of service were recognised by the French president who said:'You have set us an example which we'll not forget.
'France will never forget the British troops who landed on D-Day and all their brothers in arms.'
Mrs Lamb, who was born inEdinburgh and now lives in London, was from a naval background - her father was Rear Admiral Ronald Wolsley Oldham, and served on battleships in the First World War.
At the age of 19, the brave woman joined the Women's Royal Naval Service instead of taking up her place at Oxford University and andlater helped in the planning of the D-Day landings from Churchill's war room in London.
Ms Lamb said her motivation to enlist stemmed from her desire to see Nazi Germany defeated.
'I felt very strongly about the Germans,' Ms Lamb said.
'I'll never forget the moment when we had the whole of the coast opposite England was absolutely occupied by Germans from Norway to Spain. And you could say they were almost touchable across the Channel.
As a plotting and operations officer in the Battle of the Atlantic,she charted the progress of convoys crossing the Atlantic Ocean amid constant danger from German U-boats.
Mrs Lamb (pictured) was one of the skilled women who served in the Women's Royal Naval Service, better known as the Wrens, to help prepare detailed plans for D-Day
The brave woman dropped out of Oxford University to take up a position with the Wrens,painstakingly creating detailed maps to guide the crews of landing craft to shore
In 1939, Mrs Lamb had been on a training course in Bath, Somerset, when she missed the train back to Plymouth.Luckily she was saved by a Polish officer who flew her back in his plane
Last year the former Wren was flown in a Miles Magister plane — 84 years after she was offered a lift home from a party in one by a Polish officer
The young Wrens officer painstakingly created detailed maps to guide the crews of landing craft that ferried the men to shore.
The maps 'showed railways, roads, churches, castles, every possible feature that could be visible to an incoming invader and from every angle,' Mrs Lamb said.
'It was intense and exciting work, and obviously detail was vital. It was crucial that the maps were 100% accurate.'
Lamb recalls an air of tension as senior military and civilian officials around her prepared for Operation Overlord, the long-discussed Allied invasion of Europe that eventually ended the Nazis' grip on the continent.
Her next assignment was as a plotting officer at Portsmouth, the home of the Royal Navy. Lamb was part of a team of Wrens who used information from radar stations and coast guards to plot ship movements through the English Channel on a large flat table.
'You had all the convoys, all the huge ships the liners, all going at about 26 knots. Everything had to be kept up to date.' she said.
'I was a leading Wren aged 20. It was really quite exciting. I did a job which I enjoyed and which was useful. I felt it was useful… it saved people's lives.
'Plotting was interesting because if you saw a radar blip which might've been a submarine or a motorboat… you would send a motorboat to investigate.
Many historians describe D-Day as the 'beginning of the end' of the Second World War
British troops at Juno Beach on D-Day in 1944. The work of the Wrens was essential and Mrs Lamb said: 'It was intense and exciting work, and obviously detail was vital.'
The map-maker said she often saw Churchill (pictured in 1940) in the halls of Whitehall in the run-up to D-Day and described the atmosphere as very tense
Christian Lamb, aged 100, was born in Edinburgh to a naval family and said her motivation to enlist stemmed from her desire to see Nazi Germany defeated
'It was very entertaining, interesting and very educational.
'I was absolutely free and that was unusual, I would've been sent to some awful place to learn how to iron and how to wash and cook and things, there I was free, it was great fun,' she added.
She later took on a similar role in Belfast, plotting the movements of convoys that carried supplies from North America. That included staffing her post as the news came in that a convoy escorted by her future husband's ship, the destroyer HMS Oribi, had been attacked by a U-boat wolf pack.
How the Wrens' cracking of the German's Lorenz code helped the Allies at D-Day and contributed to their victory in the war
The Wrens work helped Allied military leaders establish that Hitler and his troops had fallen for their propaganda campaign.
Just before D-Day they revealed that Hitler had believed the deception campaign to convince him that the invasion force would land in the Pas de Calais.
Nicknamed Operation Fortitude, the Allied plan used dummy and inflatable tanks to confuse German forces.
Even once the invasion had begun they kept the Germans guessing about whether another landing would follow elsewhere.
As a result Hitler kept vital forces in the Pas-de-Calais - well to the north of the Normandy beaches - until the Allies were already overrunning his troops.
Another message showed how Allied air raids were successfully hindering the German war effort.
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The leading Wren met her husband, Lt John Lamb, and the pair were engaged just 10 days later.
Despite their long marriage, the wartime hero said she kept the truth of her job hidden from her husband for more than 40 years before eventually revealing the truth to him.
She told the BBC that while working she was constantly worried about her husband.
She said: 'You couldn't look far into the future; he might only have had a fortnight's leave and then be killed at the end of it.'
She added that you never knew what was around the corner and you just had to get on with the job.
While doing her bit for the war effort, in 1939, Mrs Lamb had been on a training course in Bath, Somerset, when she missed the train back to her Navy base in Plymouth.
Luckily she was saved by a 'delightful Polish officer' whom she had met at a party the night before.
Mrs Lamb recalled how she had to sit on her parachute in the back and the trip was made extra-thrilling by the pilot 'dive-bombing cows'.
She wrote in her memoir Beyond the Sea: 'He astonished me by saying, 'Shall I take you back in the old crate?'
'I was nearly speechless when I realised, he meant his aeroplane. I stammered out my rapturous acceptance.'
She added: 'Flying in an open plane, low down over the River Tamar and seeing the whole estuary and coast as on a map, was an experience I'd like to relive even today.'
Last year Mrs Lamb, who lives in London, finally got the chance to be a passenger once more on the Miles Magister, saying it was 'a lot nosier' than she remembered.
She said: 'That was the most incredible and never-to-be-repeated experience, to be so free up in the air and the wind in my face, it was thrilling and I feel so lucky to have had this chance again at 103.'
