Major’s ‘discipline’ message on jabs ahead of his 101st birthday
A VETERAN who has endured months of isolation is urging people to persist in following coronavirus rules as the UK reaches the anniversary of its first lockdown.
Major Ted Hunt, who will turn 101 tomorrow, commanded landing craft on to Gold Beach in Normandy in June 1944.
Having received his own first vaccine dose, he urged people to get their Covid jabs, saying any hesitancy was “the same as deciding not to look both ways before you cross the road”.
Speaking from his home in West Sussex, he sent out a message to the public for the remaining months of restrictions ahead.
“All it needs is a little discipline, have your vaccination because it’s insane not to do it,” he said, telling people “not to gather together because you owe it to the NHS staff who are going to be overworked because of your decision to go with a crowd”.
He said: “I’d like to be 102 and if it requires some discipline on my part – OK.”
Being classified as particularly vulnerable due to their advanced age, surviving servicemen from the Second World War have seen their lives restricted more than most during the pandemic.
Mr Hunt, a former Queen’s Bargemaster who saw out the war working on the engineering of water crossings in the Netherlands, said he was looked after by a carer living next door and was in regular contact with his family.
“I’m not one of those poor old boys who’ve been forgotten. I’ve got it made,” he said.
The Taxi Charity for Military Veterans is among the organisations that has had to negotiate Covid restrictions while trying to support vulnerable ex-servicemen. It helps between 60 to 80 Second World War veterans as well as others who served after the conflict.
Vice president Dick Goodwin said a year of restrictions has had a “serious effect” on veterans and “put a lot of them into a much deeper isolation”.
While many have coped with the support of families, Mr Goodwin said that with some “you just can tell when you’re talking to them on the phone, they’re talking to you but with some of them there’s very little life in their voice”.