A FORMER Leominster war hero who witnessed the last cavalry charge of the British army has died aged 107.

Jasper Cecil Hankinson - known as Cecil - was awarded France's highest military honour, the Legion D'Honneur, by President Chirac in 1997.

He was the second oldest surviving British ex-soldier to have fought in the First World War. The oldest survivor, Henry Allingham of Eastbourne, is 10 days older.

Cecil, who was a Leominster Cricket Club vice-president until his death, was "unique", says Dennis Goodwin of the World War One Veterans' Association.

"He was the last man alive to have fought on two fronts in the Great War - France and Palestine," said Mr Goodwin.

Cecil, one of the first pupils of the 'new' Leominster Grammar School in 1909, left his clerical job at Leominster Labour Exchange to join the army and go to France.

It was Private Hankinson's job to collect the bodies of dead soldiers in a horse and cart. He and his comrades in the London Scottish Regiment - including his brother Bert - were pulled back from the front line slaughter of the Somme and sent to Palestine.

Cecil carried medical supplies on a white mule called 'Snowball' who led him 'home' when he became lost in the desert.

Private Hankinson witnessed the last cavalry charge of the British army, which took place in the Sinai Desert in 1917 when men of the Worcester Yeomanry Cavalry, armed with sabres and mounted on 181 horses, charged 20,000 Turks, 21 German field guns and three Austrian howitzers.

Cecil was also part of the expeditionary force which liberated Jerusalem on Christmas Day 1917.

During this period Cecil was injured while driving a horse and cart loaded with ammunition.

He returned to Leominster where his father was headmaster of the British School in Bargates and where the family ran a shop.

Although his work as a civil servant eventually took Cecil away, he kept in touch with the town, the club and family members all his life.

His nephew Graham - Bert's son - and Graham's wife Dorothy sent him Leominster match reports from the Hereford Times.

Cecil was a guest at Leominster Cricket Club's 150th anniversary dinner in 1987, where he enjoyed meeting Basil D'Olivera.

Mr Hankinson, a widower, who died at a Warwickshire nursing home, is survived by his son and daughter-in-law Duncan and Margaret, his granddaughter Jane and three great-grandchildren.