Huge turnout for Portsmouth Navy veteran on his 100th birthday whose advice is: 'Use your loaf!'

Jimmy Green turned 100 on October 1 and celebrated with his family, neighbours and 29 of his friends from the United Reformed Church coffee club, at The Sunshine Inn pub in Drayton, who came to wish him well on the special day.

‘It was very good,’ says Jimmy.

On being asked if he felt any difference upon reaching triple digits he adds: ‘Yes, I feel that I’ve reached 99!’

He reflects on his first ever car, a Morris 1100.

Jimmy, who now lives in a home in Petersfield close to his eldest son Peter, lived on Old Manor Way in Drayton for over 30 years.

Peter, 67, helped organise the event with the help Alison Keoghan from the club, of which Jimmy has been a member for five years, also lives in Petersfield and was there on the day to mark the occasion alongside his dad.

He says: ‘He had a great day.’

‘He joined the Navy when he was just 14, he lied about his age so he could get away from where he lived in Walthamstow,’ adds Peter.

Jimmy was just 16 when he fought in the Second World War, and he remembers being in a gun turret which was hit by a shell.

After meeting his wife, Mary, in a cinema in London the pair were married soon after.

‘They were married quite quickly, the war made people think about everything in much more of the short-term,’ says Peter.

Jimmy and Mary soon started a family having Peter and another son, Paul, now 52, and moved to Adelaide, in Australia, for three years where Jimmy worked as a Postmaster General.

‘They were worried about the war, or the potential war as this was the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and they believed they were safer in Australia,’ says Peter.

‘My mother hated it, so after three years, they got on a boat and came back to England.’

The family first moved to Surrey for a year, where they owned a convenience store and then they came to Portsmouth in 1970 where they opened their second store on Highland Road, in Southsea.

‘I’ve always liked Portsmouth, even when I came down here as a youngster when they shipped me down,’ says Jimmy.

While Mary ran the shop, Jimmy worked at the Portsmouth Dockyard as a telephone engineer, which he declares he very much enjoyed, remaining there until he retired.

‘It was a simple life, but they were happy and dad always had a job,’ says Peter.

‘I liked my gardening and my dad did as well,’ adds Jimmy.

Peter remembers his dad as a hardworking man, who was fond of the off puzzle.

‘He was a man on his tools all his life,’ says Peter.

‘There was never a time he was unemployed, when he arrived in Australia he was the first person off the plane to get a job three days after they got there,’ he adds.

Jimmy, who was also an avid union supporter and leader, remembers Navy Day and the day the American ships came to Portsmouth.

‘That always amused me, they were destroyers,’ he says.

‘They were big compared to the British ones,’ adds Peter.

On advice he would give to the younger generation after a long eventful life, Jimmy simply says: ‘Use your loaf!’

Jimmy looks forward to his 101st next year and adds: ‘People say to me, 101? You don’t look old enough!’