SUNDAY will be an emotional day for Jim Adams, as Remembrance Day always is.

As he marches along High Street to the sound of the Alcester Victoria Silver Band, he will already be honouring the many men and women who have died in war, among them his own brothers Richard and Thomas.

When he reaches the war memorial on the green outside St Nicholas Church, he will read the exhortation, as he has for many years, and for the first time this year the names of the 72 Alcester people who died during the Great War.

Next year, the 60th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, it will be those who died in that conflict.

As president of the Alcester branch of the Royal British Legion, Jim will lay a wreath, along with representatives of other organisations in the town many of them too young to have experienced the horrors of war for themselves.

But it was as a young man that Jim, like so many others, went to war.

Jim, 82, was born in Northamptonshire and joined the Royal Navy in January 1939 where he did his boys' training on HMS St Vincent. When war broke out he was on the cruiser HMS Manchester. The ship was escorting convoys to the Mediterranean and was heading to Malta when it was hit.

The Manchester did not sink on that occasion, but many lost their lives and Jim had the job of taking the bodies out of the boat. A few years ago he discovered that one of those who died was the father of a fellow RBL member in Alcester.

Jim's next ship, HMS Whitshed, hit a mine on its first trip out of Harwich and his third, HMS Spartan, was sunk.

During the attack on Spartan, Jim jumped into the water to save a fellow seaman and suffered ear damage as a result which eventually ended his naval career.

So he moved to Evesham to begin a new career in market gardening.

He came to Alcester in 1947 joining the local RBL branch soon afterwards and through that and other charity work became one of the best known characters in the community.

But the work of the Royal British Legion remains at the forefront, and his pride is evident as he speaks of Alcester's contribution.

"I'm quite proud of the Remembrance Day service we do in Alcester, because it's always such a wonderful event," he said.

"It's very emotional for me. I do think of all those people who lost their lives or were injured, particularly my two brothers.

"I'm pleased that so many young people take part in the parade still, and are included in the service afterwards. We weren't much older than them when we went to war."