Retired Rolls-Royce chauffeur Harry Smith has made it his mission to sell a poppy to everyone in Bradley.

For the past 20 years, 83-year-old Harry has raised thousands of pounds for the Royal British Legion — but, as well as wanting to help his former comrades, few people knew he had his own reason to be thankful.

Harry, a widower of Raines Drive, became involved because he feels he owes the organisation for ex-servicemen a huge debt. The Legion won him a pension when his hearing started to fail due to his deafening work as an able seaman gun layer in the Second World War.

Harry, who used to be the chauffeur and handyman for millionaire Bill Blandford, said: “The big guns made me deaf and so the British Legion got me a pension. I was so grateful I wanted to give something back.”

Harry is extremely proud of his wartime experience, which propelled him from a simple life as an 18-year-old farm hand in Skipton to directing the guns with the Tenth Destroyer Flotilla, which ran the gauntlet with the enemy in the Channel and Atlantic.

On Remembrance Sunday, Harry will join his old comrades at London’s Armistice Parade and he will lay a wreath at the Cenotaph.