A SECOND World War hero who was blinded by a German mortar during the Battle of Arnhem has died aged 94.

Ray Sheriff defied his disability by completing multiple marathons and parachute jumps for charity during his long and eventful life.

Mr Sheriff, who lived the last years of his life in Rottingdean, died on December 27.

Betty, said: “He was so incredibly active, he never let anything stop him. He also wasn’t bitter about the war, he saw the Germans as soldiers just like him, only they were fighting for the wrong side. He held no grudges and when he got home he got on with life.”

“He was a fantastic man.

“They don’t make them like that anymore, that’s for certain.”

Mr Sheriff joined the war effort in the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire light infantry before volunteering for the Parachute Regiment. He was made a corporal and served in Italy, Sicily and North Africa, where he was shot .

In September 1944 he was dropped behind enemy lines in Holland for what would become known as Operation Market Garden. The mission, which was the subject of the film A Bridge Too Far, was an attempt by the Allies to bring about the end of the war.

Speaking to The Argus last year as part of the paper’s 70th anniversary feature of the mission, he said: “I wasn’t overly worried beforehand. I was used to getting shot so I half expected it everywhere I went. When you’re a young man you feel invincible, don’t you? We all had a job to do.”

But disaster struck just minutes after his landing when a German mortar blinded him.

He ended up in a military hospital before being transferred to a prisoner of war camp. He endured seven months in the camp before he was returned home.

Back in England he got on with life with the help of a number of charities. He lived for a time at St Dunstans in Ovingdean, now Blind Veterans UK, where he met his wife Betty in 1981. Determined to carry on as normal, Mr Sheriff set about living his life as he had before being blinded.

His funeral will be held at Brighton’s Woodvale Crematorium North Chapel, Lewes Road, on January 12 at 1pm.