The funeral of a Dambusters hero has been attended by hundreds of people who never knew the WWII veteran.
Harold Jellicoe Percival was part of Bomber Command and served as ground crew for the Dambusters raids which took place in May 1943.
Mr Percival never married or had children. When he died at the age of 99, the funeral home in Lancanshire organising the service put an advert in a newspaper appealing for people to attend. The advert made its way onto social media sites.
The response overwhelmed Mr Percival’s nephew who said: "We thought there would just be two or three of us, so to see this many hundreds of people turn up is stunning."
"He was a quiet man, he was an ordinary man who did his duty and served in the war and to see so many people turn up, it's just overwhelming," Andrew Colyer-Worrsall said.
About 100 people were inside with another 400 standing silently outside in the rain. They included a soldier on leave from Afghanistan and an 80-year-old woman from London who had been in the RAF.
A spontaneous round of applause broke out as his coffin was taken from the hearse.
The Dambusters March played as the coffin was carried into the crematorium just before 11:00 GMT on Armistice Day.
A two-minute silence was observed around the coffin to mark the anniversary of the WWI armistice before it was carried into the crematorium.
A nephew in Australia described Mr Percival as a shy person who was a bit of a nomad. He lived with the nephew “on and off in Australia and New Zealand” and visited England for holidays where he was known to travel about the country with just a backpack.
