WAR veteran and French Convalescent Home resident Fred Win fought back tears on Armistice Day as he pleaded with the Argus to battle on for his future.

Fred, 90, spent six horrifying years fighting for freedom all over Europe with the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers during the Second World War.

Unlike so many of his fellow soldiers, Fred survived bloody battles in France and Germany to return to his home in Patcham, Brighton.

But now he and dozens of other frail and elderly residents face being turfed out of the home they love as developers prepare to move in with the bulldozers.

Speaking after a sombre and moving Remembrance service at the Peace Statue in Hove yesterday, Fred, with tears in his eyes, said: "I just cannot thank the Argus enough. Please keep up the fight to save our home. It's not right what these people are doing. Please keep going."

Fred was at the service with broadcaster Simon Fanshawe and six other residents of the home.

Surf FM boss Simon, who lives near the striking chateau-style building in Kemp Town and who has joined the growing list of thousands backing the Argus campaign to save the home, was on hand to take Fred to the service.

The men stood together for the two-minute silence among a gathering of more than 100 former soldiers, council leaders and emergency services chiefs.

After the service, Simon said: "I live close to the home and I myself have written letters to support it.

"Standing here with a man like Fred is a great moment. Remembrance is very important to me. My father was a colonel in the war and I believe understanding the future as we go into the next century is all about understanding and respecting the past.

"It's the same with the French Convalescent Home. We must respect its past. People cannot just wipe it out. They cannot behave with such insensitivity."

Almost 40 residents face being relocated to other care homes in Brighton. Bovis Retirement Homes, which is in the process of buying the convalescent home from its trustees, wants to bulldoze it and build 67 flats in its place. Trustees say financial pressures have left them no choice but to sell up.

But so far, more than 4,000 people have signed an Argus petition calling for the home to be saved.

Kemp Town MP Des Turner, who has battled for two years to save it by writing to French Government officials, also helped out by taking wheelchair-bound residents to the service. He spent the morning with Army veteran Fred Townsend.

Staff at the home have meanwhile slammed a statement from the home's trustees, printed in the Argus yesterday.

Michel Koenig, chairman of the trustees, said fears

the home would soon be insolvent had forced them to sell it, even though they had tried hard to keep it going. He said: "The sale has been inevitable for years. We are deeply distressed. We are very attached to this beautiful building."

But Catherine Gennaro, the home's manager, hit back, saying: "We do not understand the inevitability spoken of by the trustees.

"There has been no evidence of the trustees being directly involved in the running of the home. In fact, most of the staff and residents do not recognise the trustees, who did not even speak to them when they visited on November 8 and explained what they had done."

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