Last Post sounds at ponds where D-Day survivor aged 87 still has daily dip

HE was one of the last to leave France, and one of the first to go back when the Allies launched their D-Day invasion.
And Vic Hallums, who has been swimming at Highgate men’s ponds on Hampstead Heath since the 1930s, joined other ex-servicemen there on Thursday to remember fallen comrades.
They walked to the end of the jetty, raised the Union Flag and played the Last Post as a Remembrance Day tribute.
Mr Hallums grew up in Islington and was first taken to the ponds as a boy by his father. After his demob, he headed back to the clear waters of the Heath for the regular dip which, at 87, he still enjoys.
On November 11 each year Mr Hallums and nine comrades – all ex-servicemen and all members of Highgate Lifebouys, a swimming club which organises races and the annual Christmas Day swim – meet at the ponds to remember friends who fell fighting for their country.
Mr Hallums, a sergeant in the 51st Highland Division, puts his recovery from war wounds partly down to his regular dip.
He had wanted to join the Black Watch – currently serving south of Baghdad – because his father had fought with the regiment in World War I.
But when he went to enlist in September 1939, the regiment was full so he was sent to another Scottish unit.
He nearly did not survive the war. Serving with the British Expeditionary Force, he was evacuated from Boulogne as the Germans advanced on northern France.
He said: “We were surrounded at St Valéry-en-Caux, but managed to get away. We were spoken to in the town square by General Victor Fortune and he said: ‘Lads, get out any way you can’.
“I was lucky. I got in with a bunch of Jocks. They told me they were gamekeepers – and when you were on the run with them they showed they were much better poachers than gamekeepers.
“They knew how to live on the land. They were much better at it than us townies – they were real country boys.”
He returned to France on D-Day Three, but his landing craft took a direct hit.
“I stopped a naughty one in my left leg. I do not know if we hit a mine or whether we were hit by a barrage from the beaches.
“Suddenly we found ourselves in the water. I got dragged to a little field casualty station behind sand dunes, and from there they took me back to England.”
“Later I found I had a small bullet wound in my right-hand calf. When everything is going on around you, when people are firing at you, you just do not know what’s hitting you or not.”
He was taken to a hospital in Reading, Berkshire. “I was there for four weeks, but my left leg did not get better,” he said. “It was black with bruises and they started working their way down my leg.
“I was put on a treatment table and a physio came in. He was a blind man and he ran his hands down my leg. I nearly hit the ceiling it hurt so much, but within a week he had me walking.”
His saviour had been blinded by gas in World War I and had dedicated his time to helping injured servicemen get fit again.
Mr Hallums’ war wounds resurfaced many years later while playing a version of badminton regulars at the ponds will recognise – a game using wooden bats and a shuttlecock played in the changing rooms. Reluctantly, he had to give it up.
But his overall health has been helped by swimming.
“I never miss a day there,” he said. “Once you start you can’t give it up. When it gets cold you have to apply discipline but once you have done it you are hooked.”
He still swims every Christmas Day, although he no longer competes for the Osbourne Cup, a Highgate Lifebouys trophy for a 50-yard freestyle race he won in 1948 and again in the mid-50s.
“I haven’t done it for four years,” he said. “Instead I help organise it.”