Shoppers respond to Poppy Appeal

A member of the Bexhill branch of the Royal British Legion, Trevor, of Albert Road, was positioned outside Sainsbury's with a boxful of poppies, a sheet of pins, and a box for passers-by to push their coins inside.

He was pleased with the reaction to the poppy appeal and said: "I don't ask people who go past - they see the poppies and they want to donate. From a personal experience, my impression is that people have been significantly more generous this year."

From the chestful of war medals and the wound stripes on his forearm it's more than obvious that Trevor has been quite a hero himself.

He wears two thin brass badges on his sleeve which show that he was injured in battle.

"I have two wound stripes - that means I was seriously wounded twice in one day, But I continued doing my job."

He was a young lieutenant with the 7th Norfolks, and in July 1944 found himself in a company of 200 men led by five officers engaged in the campaign to capture the Normandy town of Caen "at all costs".

Trevor was wounded early that day as the British troops slowly advanced - a hand grenade strapped to his side exploded when he was fired on by enemy soldiers. A finger on his right hand was blown off and the other fingers were permanently ruined while his abdomen also was badly injured.

"After that wound to my hand and stomach, my commanding officer told me to go to the first aid unit. He said then he would see me after the war. I said - I don't feel that bad. I can continue."

He fought on for five or six hours more by which time he was the only officer left in the infantry battalion which had suffered "very heavy casualties".

"I managed to hold them all together, and we gained a vital position and we held on to that. Then at about three in the afternoon I got a bullet clean through my left thigh...but by then this column of troop tanks and everything reached us, and the few of us left were safe."