NEVILLE Jones OBE is a well-known figure in Burnham-on-Sea, where he has been mayor four times and served as a town, district and county councillor for many years.

In an exclusive interview with the Weekly News, the 94-year-old spoke about his war-time experiences after joining the Royal Navy in May 1942.

Before that he was a journalist by profession, and became the ship secretary on the destroyer HMS Laforey in the Mediterranean.

In March 1944, shortly after he was transferred from the ship, it was sunk by a German U Boat.

He said: “I was part of the Mulbery Harbour Scheme, the portable temporary harbour used during D-Day in 1944.

“After that I was commissioned and became Captain’s Secretary on an aircraft carrier called HMS Speaker, and because of that I’ve known every speaker of the House of Commons since 1944, because the Speaker was our sort of patron saint.

“I kept up with them all: Betty Boothroyd, Lord Weatherill and all the others.

“Because of that we were one of the first British ships into Toyko Bay in 1945 for the Japanese surrender.

“We had the privilege of bringing out the first 500 prisoners of war.

“We lined the deck and went up and down the line to cheer the prisoners.

“We took them to Manilla and then returned to be the first British ship to visit Nagasaki after the atom bomb was dropped.”

He said the RAF had organised a big 75th anniversary of the Battle of Britain and he felt the Royal Navy’s wartime record should also be marked.

To that end he has organised plaques to be mounted on the seawall in Burnham-on-Sea to mark the connection between Burnham in the USA and the Somerset town through HMS Burnham which served throughout the war.

The destroyer had been given to the British by the Americans during the war and a long-standing friendship grew up between the two twos on either side of the Atlantic through Mr Jones efforts.

He said: “There’s not been much about the destroyers that America gave to us in the war, which Churchill managed to get from the Americans when the country was on its knees.

“They were a saviour the ‘gift-horses’, as they were called, and helped us fight off the Nazis just as the RAF did.”

He said HMS Burnham survived the war and was eventually decommissioned in 1944.

After the war Mr Jones returned to journalism and later politics and moved to Burnham-on-Sea in 1972.