MEMBERS of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers at MoD Lyneham paid their last respects to one of their own at his funeral on Monday.

REME sent three representatives to the funeral of 100-year-old Alexander Thomas McQuoid, including a standard bearer from Bristol and two from Lyneham.

Mr McQuoid died on September 28 only nine days short of his 101st birthday. He was awarded the Imperial Service Medal in 1979.

He was cremated at the West Wiltshire Crematorium at Semington, with only 30 close family members, friends and the regimental members present.

They included a representative from the REME regimental headquarters and a member of the REME 8 Training Battalion at Lyneham.

The standard was lowered as his casket was carried in and a bugler played the Last Post.

Mr McQuoid was born at the Oval, Kennington, London, to Samuel and Edith McQuoid.

He attended schools in Hertfordshire and worked in a garage before joining REME. He served in North Africa from 1940 to 1946 and then worked as a chargehand mechanic at REME in Warminster until he retired.

He and his wife Joan married in Dilton Marsh in 1946 and owned several businesses, including a haberdashery shop, Post Office and hairdressers. After retiring, he worked part-time at Westbury Library.

The couple had three children, Martin, Steven and Susan, and nine grandchildren, who live in Westbury, Staverton, Cheltenham, Oxford and Huddersfield.

Mr McQuoid’s wife died eight years ago aged 84, but he soldiered on at his Westbury home before breaking a hip in a fall in January.

He had spent the past nine months living with his daughter Susan and her husband John Patey at their home in Milborne Port, near Sherborne in Dorset.

Mrs Patey said her father loved gardening and going on holidays with her mother and friends, including numerous times to Corfu where they always stayed at the same place.

She added: “At the end, he was at peace with himself. He was a very loving and caring man who would do anything to help anybody.”