100-year-old Portsmouth veteran and 'hero' gets huge birthday surprise from four family generations

On Saturday 7 January, Jeffrey Broadhurst turned 100 and celebrated with a surprise celebration held for him at Parker Meadows Care Home, where he lives in his independent living bungalow with his cat Sox.

‘It is a surprise, I thought it would just be myself and four family. It’s gone very well,’ Jeff says.

Jeff was joined by his son Roy, daughter Kay, three of his grandchildren and four great-grandchildren as well as over fifteen residents who came to celebrate his monumental birthday.

Jeff was even treated to two birthday cakes made by his granddaughter and Roy’s wife Hilary, as well as a chorus of Happy Birthday accompanied by Charles Timberlake on the piano.

Jeff suffers with Macular Degeneration and as a result has poor hearing and sight, yet is a keen listener to The News via Portsmouth Area Talking News and has also been supported by Blind Veterans UK.

Jeff first moved to the independent community six years ago with his wife Dorothy, who sadly passed away in May, 2018.

Jeff says: ‘It would take you all morning to get my lifetime down!’

‘I’ve moved from one thing to another so many times, apart from the war time I haven’t moved further north than Wolverhampton,’ he adds.

Born in Monmouthshire, Jeff left school in Wolverhampton at the age of 14 after his family were unable to afford to keep him on at grammar school. He didn’t want to do office work, so took on a butchery apprenticeship.

As a World War Two veteran, Jeff served with the RoyalMarine Commandos in various campaigns in Italy and Greek Islands and after the war inAlbania .

‘I got into the special services, and we didn’t stay longer than three months anywhere!’

‘We wintered in Bournemouth which is where I met my wife, we were very lucky.’

Jeff and Dorothy first met at a dance at the Bournemouth Pavilion, marrying the ‘love of his life’ and going on to have 72 happy years together.

‘He always says he looked across the room and said ‘there’s the girl I’m going to marry,’ adds Roy.

Jeff’s family say he was very active, using all his spare time for sports - in particular swimming - he played in the water polo and cricket teams for the town.

‘I like rugby and cricket, and swimming. I used to swim a lot before the war,’ says Jeff.

After the war Jeff followed his life yearning to be on the land and progressed from working on a small sheep farm just off Exmoor, to being a dairy herdsman then farm manager in Wiltshire, and finally to a dairy and pig farm in Somerset.

‘It suited him after the war, he’d been through some pretty tough times,’ says Roy, who describes his father as stoic and very kind.

‘In later life he’s opened up a bit more about his involvement in the war, he was one of the lucky ones,’ he adds.

Jeff and Dorothy bought their first house in Storrington, Sussex, and shortly after they moved to a pig farm at Northington in Hampshire.

Before retiring from farming, the couple’s last few years were spent on their own farm - a piggery with a ‘beautiful’ old farmhouse and lovely garden in Rolstone, Somerset.

Kay says: ‘He’s had a happy and fulfilled life.’

‘To me he is a hero, especially surviving his special operations during the war,’ she adds.

On turning 100, Jeff’s advice was to ‘just keep living!’