The retired gasworks superintendent left his home in the town two years ago to become one of the 350 world-famous in-pensioners at the Royal Hospital Chelsea in London.

Jack, whose son Ian is better known as television and stage actor Peter Blake, served throughout the Second World War, seeing action with the Royal Artillery’s 78th Field Regiment.

From the disastrous early days of Dunkirk, through the desert heat of North Africa and on to the liberation of Italy, Jack was in the midst of some of the war’s fiercest fighting, winning the Military Medal in the cauldron of Anzio in the process.

He started to explore the possibility of a new life among the scarlet-coated ranks of the in-pensioners at the Royal Hospital Chelsea after his wife May died in 2006.

Jack, who received a special presentation from the Selkirk Masonic Lodge before he left for Chelsea to mark 60 years as a member, hailed originally from Edinburgh.

He was already a Territorial Army soldier when he was called up and posted to Selkirk on the outbreak of the war.

Billeted in Heather Mills in the town, it was not long before Jack and his colleagues in the 78th Field Regiment were on their way to France with the rest of the ill-fated British Expeditionary Force.

After the disaster of Dunkirk, there followed postings in Scotland and the north of England before Jack and his comrades were on the move once again, this time to the Middle East where the task was to halt Rommel’s advancing panzers before they reached Egypt.

“Rommel was trying to boot us out of North Africa, but we stopped him at El Alamein,” Jack, an ex-sergeant who was Mentioned in Dispatches for his part in the battle, recounted to our sister paper The Selkirk Weekend Advertiser at the time of his move to Chelsea.

“We chased him back across the desert to Tripoli.

“After that we were sent to Sicily, then Anzio, before getting stopped by Kesslering’s forces at Monte Cassino.”

By the time the hostilities ended, Jack and the rest of 78th Field Regiment had fought their way as far as San Remo in Italy.

After demob, he returned home to a variety of jobs in the gasworks industry, including stints in Selkirk and Galashiels, and as a gasworks superintendent at Redditch in Worcestershire, and at smokeless fuel plants in Mansfield and Fife.

After he retired from the gas industry, Jack went to work in the dyehouse at Heather Mills.

He absolutely relished his new life at the Royal Hospital and was delighted to be given the honour of taking part in the Royal British Legion’s Festival of Remembrance at the Royal Albert Hall and, in 2007, laying a wreath at the Cenotaph in front of The Queen.

And he had become a much-respected figure in Selkirk, resplendent in his official scarlet coat and black cap at the Common Riding over the last two years.

MCE