A BLIND war veteran celebrated the 75th year since he started receiving support from a specialist charity.

Norman Perry, 97, who now lives at the Blind Veterans UK training and rehabilitation centre in Ovingdean, is the longest serving beneficiary of the charity alive today and one of the longest of all time.

He was presented with a plaque and silver salver to mark the achievement.

Mr Perry said: “It makes me feel very old. I am proud because St Dunstan’s (now called Blind Veterans UK) has been a hugely important part of my life and it’s very nice of them to do this.”

He was only 18 when he became a gun sergeant with his own gun and gun crew and was two years too young to go overseas at the time so he was posted to Borden, Kent, as a drill instructor.

He said: “That wasn’t my idea of a war. I had a word with my Regimental Sergeant Major who told me to put in for a transfer back. I did and three months later I was in France with my old regiment.”

Mr Perry fought in Lille and Ypres before landing in Newport, Belgium. In 1941 he was shipped out the Middle East, beginning a period of fighting all over the world and he remembers battles in Iraq, Suez, Egypt, Libya and the Western Deserts.

It was during one of these battles, in the Sahara, that he lost his sight when the Germans attacked him and his fellow soldiers with trench mortars.

He said: “I was directing a gun teller when I got one piece of metal in each eye at the same time.

“That spun me round, and something big hit me in the back then when I dropped, I got some more bits and pieces in the right thigh.

“I heard a sergeant saying ‘he’s had it’ and in the best Army language I could muster, I told him I hadn’t.”

After his initial training at the Blind Veterans UK centre in Cape Town, he returned to England in 1943 to finish his training.

He moved to the RNIB physiotherapy school in London, before marrying his childhood sweetheart and becoming a physiotherapist.

He ran the physiotherapy department at Grimsby Hospital for 30 years, building up the department from two to eight qualified physiotherapists.

Chief executive of Blind Veterans UK Major General Nick Caplin CB said: “It is a fantastic achievement for Norman to reach 75 years with Blind Veterans UK. He has been supported by the charity longer than any of our more than 4,000 blind veterans alive today and is still such a great presence around our Brighton centre.”