A 99-year-old D-Day veteran who protected the Allied armada from a fleet of German submarines thought his life would be “short but not very sweet”. Alec Penstone was just 15 years old and working in a factory when the war began. By June 6, 1944, he was three decks below a Royal Navy ship protecting tens of thousands of lives. He promised his father, who witnessed the horrors of the trenches in the First World War, that he would serve at sea. Joining other D-Day survivors at the Union Jack Club in London for an event organised by charities Spirit of Normandy Trust and British Normandy Memorial …