- More than 1,000 British-born servicemen and women who
fought in the Second World War will die because of malnutrition and lack
of medicines in Zimbabwe unless they are given urgent help, according to
the Royal Commonwealth Ex-Services League.
-
- Col Brian Nicholson, the league's secretary-general,
who has just returned from the former British colony, called on the
Government
last night to launch an emergency plan to evacuate the destitute elderly
servicemen and war widows to Britain.
-
- In a report on a secret visit he made to the southern
African state last week, Col Nicholson says that the veterans, impoverished
by rampant inflation, also face intimidation by "thugs" from
President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party.
-
- Col Nicholson, a former defence attache at the British
embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, told The Telegraph last night: "This
is a tragic situation. These brave people who risked their lives for
Britain
are now desperate, alone, impoverished and terrified."
-
- The Duke of Edinburgh, the league's Grand President for
30 years, had seen the report and had asked to be kept informed of
developments,
Col Nicholson said.
-
- The crisis involves more than 1,000 British-born
servicemen
and women who emigrated to Rhodesia, as Zimbabwe was known until
independence
in 1980, after 1945. Up to 5,000 former Rhodesian servicemen, who as
Commonwealth
subjects served the Crown, are also affected.
-
- The British-born veterans range from Army privates to
brigadiers, Royal Navy seamen to commanders, and Royal Air Force
aircraftmen
to group captains. They served in regiments including the SAS, the Royal
Artillery, the Royal Tank Regiment, the Lancashire Royal Fusiliers, the
Staffords, the Black Watch and the Highland Fusiliers.
-
- Most now live in privately owned nursing homes or
sheltered
housing. Col Nicholson visited three homes in Harare, the capital, and
another four in Bulawayo, the second city, and was "shocked and
appalled"
by what he found.
-
- His report gives examples of the veterans' financial
and physical suffering.
-
- One 85-year-old former captain in the SAS, awarded a
Distinguished Service Order for outstanding bravery at the age of 19 in
north Africa, set up a pension to provide him with an income of Z$4,000
a month. Because of inflation, that is now worth the equivalent of just
40p a month.
-
- Inflation of more than 600 per cent has sent the cost
of food and drugs soaring. A former major recovering from a cancer
operation
cannot afford the drugs he needs to fight the disease, the report says.
A monthly pension barely covers the price of a loaf of bread.
-
- The report accuses Mr Mugabe of deliberately
"allowing
rampant inflation to deprive anyone of pensionable age with a liveable
income" and accuses the British Government and the United Nations
of ignoring the veterans' plight.
-
- Back at his desk in London last week, Col Nicholson,
who spent 33 years in the Army, sifted through the latest applications
for financial help from the veterans.
-
- The cases include a former soldier whose investments
of Z$800,000 and savings of Z$1,000 are now worth £80; a 78-year-old
ex-lieutenant in the Royal Fusiliers whose Z$200,000 of investments are
now worth less than £20; and an ex-trooper in the Royal Tank Regiment
whose pension of Z$22,000 a month now gives him just £2.30 a
month.
-
- Col Nicholson said: "The world hardly knows about
these veterans because for years they lived a good life and didn't need
help from a services charity."
-
- Their living standards started to deteriorate
dramatically
when President Mugabe began seizing white-owned farms and inflation soared.
"The veterans dug into their savings to survive but in the past few
months those savings have started to run out and people are getting
desperate,"
Col Nicholson said.
-
- The veterans are proud and talk reluctantly about their
plight. Ken Gee, 76, who joined the RAF in 1944 aged 16 and worked as a
flight mechanic before emigrating to Zimbabwe in 1948, has £120 of
his life savings left.
-
- "When that's gone I will have absolutely
nothing,"
he said. "I'm just praying for a quick death."
-
- Colin Radcliffe, 83, served in the RAF's Hurricane and
Bomber squadrons. "We are in a terrible situation," he said.
"A lot of people sold their houses to pay for the care homes, but
inflation has wiped all that money out."
-
- Charmaine Roberts, 80, ran away to join the WAAF in 1940
when she was 16. She served in Belgium, intercepting morse messages, and
later married a major from the Eighth Army and moved to Zimbabwe in
1947.
-
- "Most veterans are on their own," she said.
"The lucky few can get help from their families but so many of our
sons and daughters have been forced to leave Zimbabwe and are struggling
to start new lives in other countries."
-
- Col Nicholson's report accuses Mr Mugabe of aiming to
"eliminate" the middle class by impoverishment and intimidation,
leaving the country ruled by an elite of Zanu-PF politicians and
businessmen,
unchallenged by a peasant class concerned only with survival.
-
- Mr Mugabe has already closed many of the best schools
and forced most of the white farmers out of the country. Now Col Nicholson
fears Zanu-PF supporters will turn on the British war veterans, ransacking
their homes, intimidating and possibly killing them.
-
- The league raises £300,000 a year in donations
to help 30,000 veterans in Commonwealth countries. In the past month it
has given up to £500 each to 360 Zimbabwe veterans and widows but
says it cannot sustain that beyond December.
-
- Col Nicholson is circulating his report to senior
military
figures and other "influential people" and wants them to press
the Government to offer immediate financial help and to implement an
evacuation
plan.
-
- He said: "We are doing our best but we can't do
it alone. If nothing is done these brave, elderly people who fought for
the Crown in the Second World War, defending the freedoms we enjoy today,
will die an ignominious death."
-
- A Foreign Office spokesman said there were "no
plans"
to evacuate British war veterans in Zimbabwe. He added: "If people
are impoverished we would offer the appropriate consular assistance on
an individual basis."
-
- Donations can be made to the
- RCEL
- 48 Pall Mall
- London SW1Y 5JG
-
- © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2004.
-
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