A WORLD War Two veteran who was awarded one of France's highest honours – but may be best known locally for his role as the founder of a popular Bournemouth band – has died at the age of 96.

Great-grandad Walter 'Wally' Cull served as a driver with the Royal Engineers during the Allied invasion of Normandy, landing three days after the initial D-Day landings.

He was involved in Operation Pluto, which saw the construction of undersea oil pipelines under the English Channel between England and France.

After he was demobbed, he began working at the Iford Bridge Motor Company as a mechanic, a job he would hold for much of the rest of his life.

He also founded the Wally Elroy Band, and performed as the drummer in venues around the south for years.

Mr Cull had a long and happy marriage to the late Lucy, a Scot who he met on the back of a lorry in Germany.

The pair had two daughters, Jean and Teresa.

Teresa said: "He grew up in Beaufort Road, Southbourne in a house his father had built.

"My mother came from the west coast of Scotland, and they met when she was a NAAFI in Germany.

"The men in the Royal Engineers would go and pick the girls up and take them for dances. They actually met on the back of a lorry, which he always loved to tell us.

"After he was demobbed, he went to Scotland and proposed to her, and they came and settled back in Bournemouth at the home he had grown up in."

The family eventually settled above the filling station in Barrack Road, Christchurch. Both Mr and Mrs Cull worked at the station.

Mr Cull spent many years touring towns in the south as part of his musical career.

"They played all over – Dorset, of course, but also the New Forest and towns in Wiltshire," Teresa said.

"He always described the band as playing 'middle of the road music'."

Mr Cull became a doting grandfather, and later, great-grandfather.

In 2016, he received his Legion d’honneur from the French embassy for his involvement in the liberation of France.

At the time, he told the Daily Echo: “Receiving the medal was very gratifying but also very unexpected.

“I joined up in February 1942 at the age of 19. I was posted to the unit that had come back during the Dunkirk evacuation in 1940. A lot of them were killed on the RMS Lancastria when it was bombed.

"It was three days after D-Day when we were posted to Normandy. We were holed up in East Grinstead waiting for the weather to get better. We eventually left Portsmouth with three tank landing ships and a Navy corvette escort.

“They sank the escort on the way over. We eventually landed ok in Arromanche. Fortunately, we had a dry landing and a good grounding, and we didn’t come against any trouble from the other side.”

Mr Cull died at the Royal Bournemouth Hospital on October 26.