WORLD War II veteran and former Poole mayor Gerald Bailey has been awarded the Arctic Star seven decades after serving on the Russian convoys.

More than 3,000 sailors lost their lives between 1941 and 1945 ensuring supply routes to the Soviet Union remained open.

Mr Bailey, aged 93, who now resides in a Lilliput care home, received his Arctic Star medal from current Poole mayor Cllr Philip Eades.

“I was just lucky I survived,” he said.

“A lot of our men didn’t.”

The creation of an Arctic Star medal was announced by Prime Minister David Cameron, last year, following decades of campaigning by veterans and their families.

Mr Bailey, who served as Poole Mayor in 1986, said: “You have to understand, the civil service in this country never saw the Arctic convoys being a different battle to the Atlantic.”

He joined the Royal Navy in 1940, aged 20, and served on a number of ships and naval postings.

“When I later went for promotion The Admiralty noted I’d been on the Malta and the Russian convoys and asked which I preferred,” he recalled.

“We’d had the bow of our ship blown off by a German U-boat at Malta and were lucky to make it home, but I told them the Malta convoys were better because if I went overboard there I was more likely to live.”