TRIBUTES have been paid to a Willand man who has been described as "one of the old school" but possessing a "fantastic understanding of people".

The funeral of Frank Clarke, was held at a packed St Mary's Church in Willand, on Friday, October 15.

Mr Clarke rose from junior ranks to become Company Commander of the 2nd Battalion Gloucestershire Regiment and was involved in the liberation of Europe in 1944-45.

Remembering his friend, Eddie Dennis, from Willand, said: "He was what you called 'of the old school' and he did not suffer fools gladly. Then much of that came from the fact he was a captain in the Army, who was commissioned in the field.

"The change in him through being in the Army was incredible. There are pictures of him sat on a motorcycle having joined the Territorial Army at 15, and he looks a typical Jack the Lad.

"When you compare it with later photographs, where he appears standing upright with other officers, his demeanour is completely different and this all happened within the space of less than 10 years.

"He had a firm grasp of moral principles and he could not understand some of the modern ways of living, but he was idolised by his children and grandchildren."

Mr Dennis described Mr Clarke as a "pleasure and a privilege to know" and someone who possessed a "fantastic understanding of people".

Mr Dennis explained that but for the fact Mr Clarke had lost a leg in Normandy, his Army career might have continued for some time after the war.

"Frank loved the Army," he said. "When he was 18, he had a motorbike, and he told me how one day he was in Blackborough and he saw two young ladies. He was showing off to them a bit, so he went speeding off on the bike, and as he went around a corner he crashed into a herd of cows and a tractor and injured his leg quite badly.

"He had to come out of the Army and he was in hospital at the outbreak of war. But he thought his way back to fitness, which was a mark of how determined he was.

"He went to Normandy and lost his leg when he trod on a mine, ironically it was his good leg he lost."

The disability did not hold Mr Clarke back. Mr Dennis said his grandsons remembered visiting him back when he would have been around 70 years old and finding him in the branches of a plum tree picking the fruit.

The church was packed for the service and mourners present included representatives from a town in the Netherlands which Mr Clarke had helped to liberate, and where he was known simply as The Liberator.

Mr Clarke was one of 10 children born in Willand, whose family had endured hardship when they lost their tied cottage after their father enrolled in the Army at the outbreak of conflict in 1914.

Mr Clarke died peacefully at home earlier this month, aged 89.