A SOLDIER who served with the Wiltshire Yeomanry has this week been presented with his World War II service medals, 57 years after his last campaign.

At a surprise presentation, Viv Reed, 86, was presented with five medals to commemorate active service during the war at El Alamein and in India.

Mr Reed had no idea his friends and family, from the village of Edington, had tracked down the medals for him.

Bill Foss, president of Edington Royal British Legion presented the medals to Mr Reed at a surprise party at the Lamb pub in the village, on Tuesday night.

Julie Swabey, district councillor and secretary of the British Legion, was responsible for getting the medals, and was delighted by Mr Reed's reaction when he realised they had got them for him.

She said: "It's quite a mystery that he never picked them up after the war, but he left the yeomanry without collecting them."

Born in 1916 in Cardiff, Mr Reed was called up to join the Yeomanry in 1939 and had postings in Basra, Syria, Egypt and Palestine before being demobbed and returning to his family home in Edington in 1946.