Readers are being asked to send Pershore veteran Harold Wilson a birthday card as he celebrates his centenary on February 9. British Legion volunteers are championing ‘a hundred cards for Harold’s 100th’ to ensure that, despite lockdown, the former tank driver will be given the attention he deserves.

“Such a long and lucky life merits some special cheer from his community,” said Pershore Legion chairman Simon Dudfield.

Born near West Lutton in the Yorkshire Wolds to Emily and Tindall, a shepherd, it was a modest upbringing for Harold and his siblings. Tindall earned just 30 shillings (£1.50) for seven days’ work a week. With four other children, plus a foster son, Tindall was unable to afford grammar school fees so Harold left school at 14 to work on the farm.

Just before the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 and lured by the prospect of better pay, Harold joined the Fife and Forfars Yeomanry, part of an armoured tank division. “I loved life in the Army,” he said. Harold learnt to drive the Sherman tank but remembers its limitations. “German shells would go through its armour like knife through butter,” he said. It was also highly combustible, so-called the ‘Tommy Cooker’. “If you were told, ‘Get out’, you needed to do so very quickly.”

Following D-Day in June 1944, Harold’s regiment, part of the 11th Armoured (‘Charging Bull’) Division, landed at Normandy in Northern France.

They were met with ferocious fighting as the Allies fought their way reclaiming Europe from Hitler’s Germany and Harold lost many friends.

His own tank was hit by a shell during the offensive - knocking him unconscious and killing his radio operator Dennis Stone, 21. Then, at the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium at the end of 1944, Harold’s troop were told to park their vehicles in the direct line of the dreaded German Panzer tanks. “It was kamikaze,” Harold said. “One poor colleague, caught in the ensuing inferno, was left with only a red strip where his mouth and eyes used to be.

Young Harold just had to focus on the job at hand. “You didn’t dwell on what you saw because it wouldn’t get you anywhere,” he said. “I learnt to be an ‘automatic’ soldier. It’s what we were trained to do.”

Harold was demobbed in 1947, returning to Jean, who he married in 1942. They had three children, Pamela, Ian and Judith. Proud moments for the family include helping son Ian receive the grammar school education his father was denied. Ian then became an Army officer.

Harold retired in 1980 as a production clerk in a Lincolnshire steelworks, before moving to Pershore in 2005. Jean saw Harold awarded the Legion d’Honneur before she died in 2019.

Since then, Harold is grateful for the daily visits of Simon Dudfield, plus Tracey Beard who brings him home-cooked meals. “Please send Harold a card to remind him that he is not forgotten,” says Simon. “He is remarkable and at the very least, deserves our great and abiding respect for his service in protecting the freedoms we enjoy today.”

Cards can be sent to Mr Harold Wilson L d’H, c/o The Manager, Roland Rutter Court, Newlands, Pershore, Worcs. WR10 1BP.