At last year's Remembrance Day, Eric Gulston M.M. collapsed and it was thought he would not live through the night.

But nothing can seem to stop the resilient 84-year-old, who had served in the Coldstream Guard, and he attended the event again yesterday. His failing heart was fitted with a pacemaker and he has made it to what is thought to be his last Remembrance Day, where war veterans assemble to pay tribute to the fallen of the two world wars.

Despite being in a wheelchair this time round, Mr Gulston proudly sported his medals, with his wife Eileen by his side.

"He has heart failure and is very poorly," admitted Ms Gulston, who celebrated her 70th birthday yesterday.

The couple has been attending Remembrance Day for 18 years, choosing to celebrate it in Malta because they "love" the island. They have been visiting every single year since 1970 and up to three times annually over the past few.

"We have travelled all over in our lives but we prefer to come here to our friends," Ms Gulston explains from their apartment at the Sunny Coast Resort Club in Qawra.

Since 1944, Mr Gulston has been stationed all over the world, including Palestine, Egypt, Germany and Kenya, retiring after Aiden in 1965.

The "M. M." behind his name is important to him, as to anybody in the British Services, and should not be omitted, his wife points out. They stand for Military Medal, awarded to Mr Gulston by King George VI in 1949, when he led his patrol of young servicemen into the Malayan jungle and got cut off with no food and water for a week but still managed to get them out alive.

With that major feat under his belt, it is not surprising that he mustered the strength to attend yet another Remembrance Day and that, against the odds, he could be in yet another photograph in The Times, positioned as he has always been, at the foot of the Floriana War Memorial.