Crowds turn out to mourn ‘unknown soldier’ Percival after public appeal

Hundreds of people attend funeral of second world war veteran Harold Percival after social media campaign

Hundreds of strangers have turned out for the funeral of a second world war veteran after undertakers put out an appeal for mourners to attend his service.

Uniformed veterans, teenage air cadets and serving members of the armed forces joined members of the public at the funeral of Harold Jellicoe Percival, known as Coe, who died in a nursing home in Lytham St Annes, near Blackpool in Lancashire, last month.

Percival, who served as ground crew with RAF Bomber Command, never married and had no children, and funeral directors feared no one would attend his cremation on Monday morning.

His death prompted Roland L Whitehead and Daughter funeral directors to make appeals in a local newspaper – calls that were further publicised on social media – for armed service personnel past and present to attend Percival’s funeral.

So few people were expected at the service that the pallbearers were expecting to have to stay in the chapel to make up the numbers after carrying in Percival’s coffin.

But, after an extraordinary response to the advert on social media, it was standing room only in Lytham crematorium on Monday, with well over 100 mourners paying their respects in the drizzle outside.

Initially, no family members were expected to attend. But after the service, Percival’s nephew, Andrew Colyer-Worsell, said the family was overwhelmed by the turnout. “It was very emotional,” he said. “It just shows how great the British public are.”

He said his uncle might not have relished the attention during his life. “He would be hiding around the corner right now,” said Colyer-Worsell, stressing that Percival was not one to dwell on his past in the war. “He was an old soldier, not a hero: just a veteran who did his duty.”

Opening the service after the two-minute Armistice Day silence at 11am, the Rev Alan Clark said he was humbled by the number of people who had come to show their respects. “We marvel at the power of the printed word, whether on paper or on screen,” he said.

He went on to quote from the John Donne poem No Man Is An Island: “No man is an island / Entire of itself / Every man is a piece of the continent / A part of the main.”

The vicar gave a short eulogy about a man he described as a “very private person – something of a nomad, carrying his possessions in a rucksack”.

Janet Wareing, the matron at his nursing home in Lytham, described Percival as “a lovely character, very feisty and independent … [He] knew his own mind. He was very proud of what he achieved.”

During the second world war, Percival served with 617 squadron, which carried out the famous dambusters raid to destroy dams in the Ruhr valley in Nazi Germany.

After the war, he worked in Australia, later retiring to England and living at the Alistre Lodge nursing and care home, in Lytham.

He was a distant relative …read more