A PROUD old solider who was one of the last surviving members of the Durham Light Infantry has died at the age of 94.

Jack Potts founded the DLI club in his home town of Bishop Auckland, where he served as secretary for 34 years.

He won campaign medals for his service in France during the Second World War where his role as a dispatch rider often placed him at the thick of the action.

His loyalty to the military never left him and one of his final outings was to pay his respects to another Bishop Auckland soldier Corporal Lee Brownson, who gave his life in Afghanistan in January.

Wrapped in a blanket against the biting cold, Mr Potts was one of hundreds of people who turned out to watch the funeral procession pass through the streets of Bishop Auckland.

Mr Potts served with the DLI’s Sixth Battalion and was at the D-Day landings.

Tragedy had struck his family while fighting for his country. His wife died, leaving two young daughters who were cared for by relatives in Durham and Doncaster.

He married again and in all had ten children, two sons and eight daughters.

He shared his later life with Vera Colling, the DLI club’s former stewardess.

He talked little about the war, apart from telling a story of how his flamboyant commander Major Maurice Kirby, who lived at Etherley Grange, near Bishop Auckland, had claimed German supreme Field Marshall Rommel’s chair after Allied troops overran the German defences in the desert campaign.

Mrs Colling said: “The DLI was very important to him. It was a big part of his life.”

Mr Potts was also a prominent member of the Royal Antediluvian Order of the Buffaloes, serving his lodge’s Provincial Grand Primo.

After the war he worked as a porter and odd-job man at Bishop Auckland General Hospital.

Mr Potts’ funeral is on Monday, at 11am, in St Andrew’s Church, South Church, Bishop Auckland.