from Manchester Metro 9 November 2001
Medal at last for Jack, 105
by Dianne Bourne
 WAR veteran Jack Baird is to be
honoured for his bravery at last — 85 years after he risked life and limb for
his country.
He’ll receive the Legion d’Honneur,
France’s highest military honour, for his role in the Battle of the Somme in
1916.
Jack is 105 and is believed to be the
oldest ever recipient of the medal.
Nurses at the home in Choriton where he has
lived for the last two years, are working with Royal British Legion officials to
arrange a private ceremony.
"He’ll be tickled pink to finally get it,"
said great-nephew Marc Brealey.
"He told my father an awful lot about the
war and his memories of that time are profuse."
Jack, who has seen life through three
centuries, fought in the trenches during the First World War and survived the
Battle of the Somme, in which 60,000 soldiers perished.
He cheated death when he was hit by
fragments of a German shell and lost a huge amount of blood. An officer picked
him up, took him to a field hospital and saved his life.
It was as he was convalescing that he met
his future wife Ellen.
They lived together in Stretford, he worked
as a draughtsman and retired in the 1950s.
The French government awarded the Legion
d’Honneur to surviving veterans of the Somme in 1996, the 80th anniversary of
the battle.
But John was unable to attend the ceremony
due to ill health and never received his medal.
He was born in Salford in 1896, joined the
Lancashire Fusiliers as a teenager with his friends, while his brother Tom
joined the Manchester Regiment.
Jack told after the war how he and his
comrades were shelled on the eve of the Big Push, the day on which more British
soldiers died than any other in history.
"Apparently Jack soon had to take cover by
travelling down a ramp into deeper trench lines - but all in single file," said
Marc, who has been researching his great uncle’s life.
"He describes hearing a huge shell coming
at the group, pressing his body against the trench for cover and getting hit in
the shoulder by fragments.
"My Aunt Pat used to play with the
fragments well after the war."
The shell wound caused a great loss of
blood, and he was hugely shaken.
"He collected his wits, and decided that
waiting for a stretcher meant death so he struggled to fmd a field hospital,
although he was very dangerously ill."
Jack, who is profoundly deaf and blind in one eye, now lives at
The Conifers nursing home, in Chorlton.
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