Defiance of
EXCLUSIVE
ARMY veteran Maurice Bastable hit out yesterday at “despicable” thieves who targeted him twice as he sold Remembrance Day poppies in his Coldstream Guards uniform.
The 84-year-old was left “very shaken up” after thugs stole £1,500 as he raised money for the Royal British Legion appeal.
Mr Bastable branded the louts “scumbags of the Earth”, but vowed: “I shall be here until the day before Remembrance Day, as I always am.
“I thoroughly enjoy it. Some of the people you get to meet you worked with for 20 years and you are raising money at the same time. That’s why I do it.
“Something like this is not going to put me off. If anything it’s strengthened my resolve and I’m determined that this year we will raise more money than ever.
“It’s absolutely despicable. In the 12 years that I’ve sat here selling poppies I’ve never had an incident like this, ever.
Shameless
“When I was a young man, such a crime would have been inconceivable. Nobody would have sunk to so low but we’re living in a changing world – people have lost respect.
“There people are of the Earth.”
Mr Bastable has raised tens of thousands of pounds selling poppies outside Marks & Spencer in Basingstoke, Hampshire, for the last 12 years.
He proudly wears the ceremonial uniform of his old regiment as he stands for nearly 10 hours a day, seven days a week, in the run-up to Remembrance Day.
He said of the theft: “It was very upsetting, a terrible thing. But what has been incredibly heartening is the response there has been from members of the public. It has been fantastic.
“The response has been incredible and people are donating more and more money. Last year we raised £15,000 and I’m sure we will top that now.”
The shameless gang – two men and a woman – struck last Saturday as Mr Bastable was packing up his stall.
They grabbed two collection boxes and returned the next morning, stealing a third box. But the scumbags they were caught after being captured on CCTV. Mr Bastable, whose wife Pauline died from cancer in 2010, said: “They were very cunning about it.
“They were pretending to be concerned about the fallen soldiers and making out that they were sympathetic and wanted to make a donation, but it was just a way of distracting my attention.”
Mr Bastable served with the 1st Battalion Coldstream Guards for 10 years after joining up in 1949, including in Libya during the Suez Canal crisis. In 2012 he met the Queen, who is the Guards’ colonel-in-chief, and the Duke of Edinburgh, in a red carpet veterans’ line up at Windsor Castle.
Poppy sellers have now chained their collection boxes to their stalls to prevent further thefts.
Hampshire Police said two men aged 28 and 54 and a 24-year-old woman had been arrested on suspicion of theft and released under investigation, pending further inquiries.