WITH a past that includes gathering souvenir shrapnel from bomb sites and thwarting a grisly bid to steal a country’s crown jewels from the remains of a concentration camp, Terry Hayward was never going to be one of those retired people who take things easy.

At 79, the Parks man leads a small squad of Street Watch volunteers who are doing their bit to keep the area safe and combat anti-social behaviour.

Avowedly not vigilantes, the group was set up to act as the eyes and ears of the police when officers can’t be there, highlighting problems as soon as they’re spotted.

The response so far has been overwhelmingly positive.

“We went out the other night and it was tremendous,” said Mr Hayward, who is married to Catherine, 80. The couple have two children and three grandchildren “At least five people came out of their homes to see us – elderly people. They told us about anti-social behaviour that concerned them, and that they’d complained and complained without anything ever being done.

“We have to clean things up and report what we see to the police. The anti-social people are taking advantage of the things they hear in the news, things like cuts to the police and cameras being taken away.”

Mr Hayward, who is originally from Walthamstow, says his earliest memories include playing among the bomb-shattered remains of buildings during the height of the Nazi bombing campaign against the capital.

National Service took him initially to the Royal Engineers and to the Fifth Royal Tank Regiment, where his base was close to the site of the Belsen concentration camp, which was then dominated by the mass graves of its thousands of victims.

One night in 1950, when Mr Hayward was serving as a regimental police officer, mysterious sounds were heard from the site, which turned out to be a German and two Russians digging among the ash and bone fragments.

“They told us they were looking for bullets,” said Mr Hayward. “But we knew that wasn’t right. Very few of the people who died at Belsen were shot.

“We arrested them and brought them to the sergeant and he phoned GHQ. Within an hour or an hour and a half, the place was full of gold braid and SAS.”

It finally emerged that the men had heard an unfounded rumour that the Dutch crown jewels were buried at the site, and had been prepared to dig for them among the remains of the murdered.

In civilian life Mr Hayward worked as an engineer, a market gardener and had his own ice cream business.

In 1957, he moved to Swindon with his wife and young family and worked for Vickers Armstrong.

“In London we were living in two rooms,” he said. “And to get somewhere bigger would have meant waiting 15 years. Then I saw an advert in the paper for new houses and new jobs in Swindon.”

So began his association with the town he has grown to love, and which has been his home for more than 50 years.

About eight years ago, his own neighbourhood suffered a bout of anti-social behaviour, including noise nuisance and trees on a nearby green being killed by people driving cars over their roots.

“This put me on the road to seeing and understanding what other people were going through,” he said.

The idea of forming a Street Watch scheme was born partly of this and partly of Mr Hayward’s volunteer work as a community walk leader.

He realised that simply by walking the streets it would be possible not only to spot problems but also to reassure the public.

He now hopes the scheme will expand across the whole of the town.

“Street Watch is the future,” he said.

“It’s not there to turn family against family but to enable people to tell the anti-social that they won’t get away with it.”

Would-be Street Watch volunteers can find application forms at local libraries.