Remembrance Day: All the lonely heroes

Like his late father and grandfather, Mould was a soldier. His grandfather was a “Desert Rat” in the 8th Army in El Alamein under Field Marshal Montgomery. His father drove tanks through the Libyan Desert doing his National Service in the Royal Army Service Corps.

Mould left school at 16 to join the commandos in Plymouth, serving four years in Osnabr?ck, Germany, then a tour in Northern Ireland and finally 20 years in the Military Police. After retiring, he decided to help other ex-servicemen in the Loughton community, where he has lived all his life. “The legion has lost most of its Second World War veterans,” he says. “We have 450 members, but I can count the remaining vets on one hand. The very youngest ones are 85 to 86, who would have served in the last year of the war.”

Harry Patch, the last Tommy of the First World War, died in July this year at the extraordinary age of 111. Now waves of Second World War veterans are dying too.

Mould seeks out isolated veterans and encourages them to socialise at the legion. He hosts bingo twice a week and organises poppy dances three times a year. The remaining veterans are sometimes reluctant to venture out. He has failed to persuade Monty Juniper, 88, who took part in the D-Day landings, to come to the drinks at the legion, even with a minicab laid on. “We don’t go out at our age.” Juniper says. “We’re old people.”

He fought, in a Sherman tank, across France, Belgium and the Netherlands through to the end of the war. His worst battle was an “horrific” mauling at Hill 112, a key position overlooking the River Orne, in Normandy. The fighting was so pitiless that the Germans named it “Kalvarienberg”, the hill of Calvary. Juniper cannot chat for long as he is going into hospital. “Having a bunch of repairs,” he jokes.

Last Christmas Mould dressed as Santa Claus and raised money on the high street in Loughton. He went to Epping Forest District Council to ask for the list of ex-servicemen and the elderly who were living “on the breadline”. He was ticked off for using such a term. “The council told me that poverty no longer exists,” he says. “This Government has eradicated it.”

Undeterred, Mould dug out the list from the year before, knocked on doors and found isolated figures, who were very happy to receive the £20 he gave them. “The[ supermarket rang to complain about the smelly old people who were in there buying bottles of scotch,” he says. “I explained and they said that next year they would give them food vouchers instead.” Mould claims that he still has £12,500 to give away, if the council would let him. “They said ‘if people come in and ask for help, we’ll give it to them’,” he says. “But veterans are too proud to ask for help.”

He is right. Dennis Laws, 85, shrugs off the macula degeneration that has left him blind for 12 years and his wife’s dementia, saying: “I’m one of the lucky ones.” He goes to visit his wife every day. “It’s difficult as she doesn’t know who I am. You feel dutybound — we’ve been married 70 years.”

Laws landed on Gold Beach, Normandy, on D-Day as a sapper with the Royal Engineers. He was a member of the Birmingham branch of the Normandy Association, which organised trips back to the beaches for ex-servicemen. It closed in the summer as the number of members plummeted. “They’re all dying off,” he says. “When it closed I became quite isolated.” Three months ago he moved into a Galanos House Poppy Home in Warwickshire.

With him in Galanos is Frank Day, 90, who patrolled the Denmark Strait on a destroyer. After the war, he ran a pub and then worked on the steam turbine in Goldington Power Station, Bedford. The threat had changed from U-boats to gangs of youths on the streets of Rushden, in Northamptonshire, where he lived.

“It became too dangerous for old people,” he says. “You walked down the street and they would intimidate you. Shout things. Not get out of the way. A gang beat one guy up and half killed him. He never regained consciousness.”

Day feels that the elderly are vulnerable to scams because of their trusting nature. The waterboard con is particularly rife: a visitor claims to be from the waterboard, keeps the victim busy turning on taps as he checks under the sink, while an accomplice loots the flat. “I used to love my country,” Day says sadly. “We don’t have the same moral values now.” He waits at the window, gazing at the extensive grounds that roll away to the Welsh border.

Walter Main was less fortunate during the war. He was wounded on the second day of D-Day, having already fought at El Alamein and in other parts of Africa and Italy. Returning from the war, injured and decorated, Main ran a grocer’s shop for 30 years in South Shields on Tyneside. “He was an old-fashioned chap, a pillar of the community,” says his nephew, Richard. After he developed Parkinson’s and bowel cancer, Main went into Garden Hill, Tyne & Weir, a purpose-built care home run by Southern Cross, one of the largest providers of care homes for the elderly in the UK. It promised him “a home from home” at £600 a week.

“The building was three storeys and understaffed,” Richard claims. “His condition deteriorated,” his nephew says. Richard wrote a formal letter of complaint and demanded his uncle’s medical records. Unsatisfied with the attitude of the staff, he then complained to South Tyneside Council. The report copncluded that Southern Cross was doing its best. Richard was not happy with its findings.

“The social workers failed to do spot visits and announced them in advance,” he says. One day Main collapsed: his daughter went in unannounced and sat with him for six hours. Last Christmas, he contracted flu and died. “It was a relief,” Richard says. “He was better off dead.”

It was a tragic end of a decorated war hero, who fought in the battle for Normandy. Part of the largest invasion fleet in history, soldiers such as Main were wedged into landing craft as they bore down on Sword, Juno and Gold beaches.

Others, such as George Cole, landed on Juno beach in tanks. The 89-year-old took his Sherman through the fiercest battles in Europe to Arnhem, where allied casualties numbered 2,000 a month. “It was a tinbox!” He laughs. “Thrown out from what the Yanks didn’t want.”

He shrugs off his war effort. “Those in Afghanistan are putting up with the same job and might have it tougher than us,” he says. Nicknamed “The Bulldog” from his time as doorman at the Royal British legion in Loughton, Cole used to challenge people for their IDs so fiercely that he had to be relieved of his post.

Since his wife died 15 years ago, he has lived alone without a war pension in a rundown part of the Debden Estate in Loughton. George Mould later tells me that other pensioners on the estate were recently robbed of their pensions after picking them up in cash.

Some veterans have become scared to venture on to the streets but Reg Rawlinson, 85, still walks around Manor Park, East London, cutting a dash in his suit. “When I go out I’m always immaculate,” he says. “I do my ironing, always press my trousers.” A former trade union officer, Rawlinson arms himself with a canister of hair lacquer when he goes out after dark on the High Street, East Ham. “They can knife you, mug you. I don’t care; I lost my wife a few years ago and that is the biggest blow you can suffer,” he says. “The worst law they passed was the Human Rights Act.” Rawlinson used to teach boxing. When he was 72 he knocked a man out who was threatening some children.

In nearby Forest Gate, one of his comrades is buried along with his name. Hero of a distant war, gone but not quite forgotten. George Mould stands alone at the grave. In his white gloves he holds the legion flagpole aloft, giving the last salute.