As a boy, he served King and country - and later protected families in his home city as a firefighter for 25 years. On Remembrance Day, he is always there in an immaculate blue blazer emblazoned with his medals.
Aged 15, he joined the Home Front in 1943 attached to the Manchester Regiment and Lancashire Fusiliers. At 16, he volunteered to serve in the Merchant Navy, going to sea in 1944 as a member of the passenger liner RMS Orion, refitted to carry 7,000 troops.
It was a perilous posting. Before D-Day the ship ferried US and Canadian troops across the Atlantic for the invasion. It was at the mercy of lurking German U-boats and their torpedoes and attacks from the air.
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