So important to respect the fallen
Ex-para, 89, backs our campaign after £300k charity walk heroics
A FORMER paratrooper, whose charity walks have raised more than £300,000, is hoping to join a two-minute doorstep silence this Remembrance Sunday.
Jeffrey Long MBE, 89, is backing the Mirror’s “wonderful” campaign to pay respects to our war heroes, saying: “With Covid it’s so important we respect social distancing but that we also respect our fallen soldiers. It’s so important to me and many others around the country.”
However, a hand injury has caused him to pause his latest 150mile trek, and he added: “I don’t know how my health will be on
Sunday but I hope to be out paying my respects.”
His walk takes in 10 Second World War crash sites on the Leeds to Liverpool canal and raises funds for the Royal
National Lifeboat Institute and RAF Benevolent Fund. Last weekend he made it to a memorial at Bradley, West Yorks, dedicated to a downed Polish air crew. Tearful Jeffrey, who served in the parachute regiment from 1950 to 1957, laid a poppy cross there. Jeffrey, of Bingley, West Yorks, said: “These causes are so important to me.”