WW2 veterans win huge funding battle just hours before major celebrations

Veterans who went into battle with ministers over a broken cash promise have sealed a stunning victory with just hours to spare.

Some 23 heroes are due to set sail tomorrow before receiving the adulation of the Netherlands at Monday's Liberation Day celebrations. And their journey has been made all the more joyous after it was confirmed Britain will pick up the tab. Vets' commemorative trips were in peril after a funding promise was snatched away , only for the warriors and the Express to team up and force ministers into a humiliating about-turn.

Dick Goodwin, Vice President of the Taxi Charity for Military Veterans which is taking the heroes to Holland, said: "We are incredibly grateful to the Government for recognising the importance of commemorating VE Day and for stepping in to provide this vital funding. It was an enormous relief and means we can now deliver much-valued trips without compromise. I also want to thank the Daily Express for highlighting the issue and campaigning tirelessly. Your support has made a real and lasting impact."

The vets, each chauffeured in a conquering cavalcade of black cabs, are set to depart from Harwich but before eleventh hour proof arrived, funding arrangements remained shrouded in doubt.

Chaos erupted after the Government promised to cough up cash, then refused, before the "betrayal" promoted a cast-iron assurance money would be given.

Even then confusion reigned until, after days of flip-flopping , the office of Veterans' Minister Al Carns wrote to the Taxi Charity and Spirit of Normandy Trust, saying: "Noting the desire for clarity, it is not lost on the minister that there is a requirement to communicate even while we work this through. For the avoidance of any doubt and to provide some reassurance, the Ministry of Defence is absolutely committed to funding overseas travel for veterans."

With the clock ticking, written confirmation finally came from the Ministry of Defence, which said it had put a "funding agreement in place for these important events". It added: "We wish you all the very best with your preparations for these important events."

Taxpayers will now rightly pick up the full tab of veterans' bed and board, and those of their carers, for visits to Holland, Normandy for D-Day services, and other European battlegrounds.

It means at least 30 heroes from the greatest generation will be able to make and receive valedictory salutes in this momentous of anniversary years.

The cost of this year's trips is estimated to be in the region of £200,000 and come s ahead of an epic week during which Britain will commemorate VE Day, marking the 80th anniversary of the end of the war in Europe.

On Sunday, Holland will observe a Day of Remembrance. The day after, vets, including Battle of Arnhem warrior Geoff Roberts, who turns 100 in June, will lead a military parade through Wageningen, the city where the German surrender was signed.

More than 100,000 people are expected to line the streets in an extraordinary show of eternal gratitude.

Former Met Police officer Mr Goodwin, who has volunteered with the Taxi Charity for more than 20 years, said: "Tens of thousands will clap, cheer, and thank the men and women who helped free their country. The applause will be overwhelming, the atmosphere electric, emotional, and unforgettable - and these veterans deserve every single moment of it."

Geoff, from Peterborough, Cambs, was just 19 and a private in the 7th Battalion King's Own Scottish Borderers when he was part of a crack team sent to help to liberate the Netherlands from the grip of Nazi tyranny.

On September 17, 1944, he flew from the UK alongside two pilots and 28 troops in a 30-seater Horsa glider towed by an RAF plane.

The hero - captured during the assault and held as a prisoner of war - was one of 765 men from the battalion dropped on to the Continent but by the end of the Battle of Arnhem 112 were dead, 76 evacuated back to Britain and 577 reported missing.

During the bloody battle some 35,000 Allies valiantly fought the Germans for nine days in some of the fiercest fighting of the war. It resulted in the award of five Victoria Crosses, four of them posthumous, and is immortalised in the 1977 epic A Bridge Too Far, directed by Richard Attenborough, depicting Operation Market Garden, the doomed operation.

When he was snared by the Nazis, a German officer told him in perfect English: "For you the war is over."

He was then sent to the POW camp Stalag 12 A and then Stalag IV-C where he was put to work as a slave in coal mines.

In 2019, on the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Arnhem, he met King Charles, then Prince of Wales, who asked him: "Did they take you somewhere ghastly?" Geoff replied bluntly: "Yes, down a bloody coal mine."

The hero, who fought in the famous Battle for the White house, which ended with a bayonet charge, has returned to Holland every year since the war to lay a wreath at the Airborne War Cemetery in Oosterbeek on behalf of his old regiment.

He said: "We weren't sure what sort of reception we would get because we dropped out of the sky and the place was wrecked within a week. We failed, and they paid a heavy price for us trying to liberate them, but they're still greeting us now and thanking us, after all this time."

Also joining the heroes will be 101-year-old Polish-born Eugeniusz Niedzielski, who in 1939 was deported to a labour camp by the Russians but in 1942 when Stalin sided with the Allies, joined the new Polish Army which was placed under British command. He enlisted in the 1st Armoured Division and fought in Normandy after D-Day in 1944, before moving on to the Dutch border to help liberate the city of Breda as part of Operation Pheasant.

In 1947 Eugeniusz came to the UK and enlisted in the Polish resettlement Corps, and lives in London.

Last year, on the 80th anniversary of D-Day, King Charles wiped tears from his eyes as he addressed 41 veterans at the British Normandy Memorial overlooking Gold Beach in Ver-sur-Mer, which records the names of 22,442 people from more than 30 countries who perished under British command between June 6 and August 31, 1944.

He said: "On the beaches of Normandy, in the seas beyond and in the skies overhead, our Armed Forces carried out their duty with a humbling sense of resolve and determination: qualities so characteristic of that remarkable wartime generation.

"How fortunate we were, and the entire free world, that a generation of men and women in the United Kingdom and other Allied nations did not flinch when the moment came to face that test."

Richard Palusinski, Chairman of Spirit of Normandy Trust, which is taking seven veterans back to Northern France next month, said: "The visit is massively important, giving them the opportunity to reflect and remember and, in so many cases, to lay ghosts.

"The visit to Normandy is one of the events that they keep in their diaries and, I strongly believe, gives them a target to aim for, a reason to stay alive.

"We are a small charity and do not have significant financial resources. This has really taken the pressure off from our necessary fundraising and we can concentrate on providing the best possible support for our wonderful veterans. I am delighted at the news and thank the Express for taking up the case so positively."