As he has done for many years, Don Sheppard, Basildon’s beloved 103-year-old war hero who fought in the D-Day landings and in Arnhem, will be laying a wreath at the Pitsea War Memorial on Sunday.

Don was a 24-year-old sapper with the Royal Engineers when he served in the Second World War.

He has since spent decades working on behalf of Normandy veterans and was a driving force in getting a permanent D-Day memorial in place at the Living Memorial at White House Farm in Rettendon.

He is now only a handful of Normandy veterans left alive in the country.

Don says it’s especially important than we support the Poppy Appeal this year: “With everything going on in the Middle East now it’s crucial that we remember the sacrifice made by so many in both world wars.

“I am going to two schools this week to talk to children about my experiences of being a soldier in the war.

“Although they are so young and don’t always understand, I love going to schools to talk to them about why they should buy a poppy.

“Basildon people have always been generous and supported our poppy appeal.

“One year at the Eastgate Shopping Centre we raised more than £46,000 for the British legion- that’s an incredible amount of money.

“In my regiment alone 9,000 men died in Normandy.

“I lost many friends. They’d be shot right next to you. One minute they’d be there, the next they were gone. At the time you didn’t have time to process it. You had to stay alive. It’s only afterwards you can really take in the scale of what has happened. The sheer scale of the loss of life.

“When I went into the war I was one of the lads, puffing away on cigarettes and having a good time. But the war changed me.

“I saw how cruel human beings are capable of being to one another. I saw with my own eyes what the Nazis did to prisoners at Bergen Belsen concentration camp. I will never get those scenes out of my mind.

“With all the terrible things happening in the world sometimes I think it’s our human nature to be born, kill each other and die, but I can’t let myself go down that road. I have to believe the sacrifice that so many of our men made was not in vain.”