D-Day hero and scout leader Claude Jukes dies aged 90

A D-Day hero known to thousands of Black Country scouts who attended the camp he used to run died on Remembrance Day – wearing a poppy that nurses pinned to his hospital gown.

Claude Jukes – better known as Jim – who ran Kinver Scout Camp, near Stourbridge for several decades, was taken prisoner of war after helping to defend the Pegasus bridge, which had been retaken from the Germans in the early hours of D-Day.

The brave 90-year-old was taken into Dudley's Russells Hall Hospital with a chest infection last week – and his family say he was determined to hold on to life long enough to see in Remembrance Day. "One of our sons commented – he's waiting for the right day to die," said Mrs Jukes's widow, Sheila, aged 80, at their home in Foley Grove, Wombourne.

"I stood in front of the television wearing the poppy on his cap, as he always did, during the two-minute silence on the 11th of the 11th – and the nurses made sure he had a poppy pinned to his gown for Armistice Sunday, when he died at about 7am."

Mr Jukes, a retired printer, who worked at companies in West Bromwich and Dudley, was warden at Kinver Scout Camp – a voluntary job – for over 30 years and he also used to run a scout group in Dudley.

Read the full story in the Express & Star.