War veteran, 93, makes sky dive

Jim Long celebrates completing the sky dive successfully

A 93-year-old World War II veteran has completed a parachute jump to help injured soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Jim Long, a survivor of the Japanese prisoner of war camps, made the tandem jump from 10,000ft (3km) over Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire.

The veteran, from Brighstone on the Isle of Wight, described the experience as "wonderful".

He raised £1,000 for the Royal British Legion Welfare Fund.

"I'm stone deaf after that," he said on landing after his first ever sky dive.

"Lovely, wonderful, but it was noisy."

Mr Long volunteered for service with his two brothers in 1939 and served as a corporal in the Royal Armoured Service Corps.

Jim Long comes into land on his tandem sky dive

He has been a keen fundraiser for war veterans and organised for the names of the victims of World War II to be inscribed onto Newport's war memorial.

"I was not nervous," he said about the jump.

"They said 'you're mad' when I told them what I wanted to do.

"But I said I'm going to do it and that was it."

His wife Anne, 68, added: "I thought he was joking [when he told me]. But does not joke about things like this."