RAF veteran Francis William Bennett died peacefully surrounded by his family on November 25, aged 95. Mr Bennett, more commonly known as Frank to friends and family, was born on September 3, 1920 in Aintree in Lancashire.

As a small child, the Bennett family moved to Hoylake on the Wirral because his father was an engineer in the GPO and he helped out at the Liverpool Exchange.

Like a lot of young men during that time, Mr Bennett wanted to do something towards war efforts which made him signed up for the RAF when he was 20.

While waiting to hear whether he had been selected, he instead dedicated his time as with the organisation which was the predecessor of the Home Guard.

Once chosen to join the RAF, one of Mr Bennett’s earliest missions was to be sent to the US to learn how to fly. Out of the 30 men taken, only 10 passed – one of which was Mr Bennett.

On his way back to the UK, the ship he was travelling on, which was part of a convoy, was torpedoed but to his surprise the crew contained the sinking part of the ship and it eventually docked in Halifax.

Mr Bennett was never far from misfortune and only a couple years later, the plane he was flying over Duisburg in was shot down by the Germans.

As he was a sergeant, he was the only man with a parachute and his colleagues didn’t survive the crash.

Mr Bennett landed from the emergency jump in a tree and after searching for a nearby village, he was met by German locals who called the police.

Eventually the Gestapo arrived and he was taken to the SS headquarters where he was interrogated for four weeks despite being injured and having shrapnel in his head and having broken ankles.

He was then handed over to prisoner-of-war camp Stalag Luft III – a during the Second World War that housed captured air force servicemen.

Months had passed before Mr Bennett was one of thousands of prisons who were forced to take part in the Long March walking westwards across Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Germany in extreme winter conditions, over about four months in 1945 as a defence for the Germans.

It was during this time that Mr Bennett, along with a fellow RAF comrade, managed to escape and after a few days, the pair spotted an American Jeep in the countryside. It was from this fateful meet that Mr Bennett was rescued and taken to the nearest base and later transported back to the UK.

Due to the injuries he sustained, Mr Bennett was posted in several positions after the war was over in countries such as Germany and Singapore among others in secretarial roles.

Throughout his 33-year service to the RAF, he was also a test pilot for Canberra planes.

It was on a trip to Cheshire that Mr Bennett met his wife Sine in 1953 through a mutual friend. It was only a year later that the pair married in Backford, Cheshire. The couple went on to have two children.

It was when he was stationed in Upavon during the RAF that the family moved to Wiltshire, more particularly Bowerhill in Melksham where they were one of the first families to settle in the area in 1972.

Upon full retirement from the RAF, Mr Bennett took up a position at the Avon Rubber factory in Melksham as the health and safety officer for nearly 10 years, which is when he decided to retire for good to spend more time with his family.

In his later years, Mr Bennett developed a fond love for gardening but what he will be most remembered for by those closest to him was his handy man skills from fixing clocks to broken china.

Mr Bennett leaves wife Sine, children Nicholas and Jane, grandchildren Alex and William and great grandchild Blake.