He survived the war but the NHS killed him

He survived Dunkirk, World War 2 and our dangerous streets as a police officer but it was our hospitals that finally killed him. Former Coldstream Guard Joseph Nixon, 87, survived the battlefields of France and Belgium.

But after a bowel operation he caught pneumonia and superbug clostridium difficile and died at Maidstone Hospital in Kent at the end of last month.

Mr Nixon, who was also a Met Police officer after the war and a "tireless" campaigner for alcoholic support groups for prisoners, was appalled at how overworked nurses were and the dirty conditions at the hospital.

This is the NHS today. We get third rate care for our war heroes. Would they have fought and died for the country we have today if they knew what it was going to be like?