Remembering Peter Van Zellar

Peter Van Zeller has sadly passed away, aged 99.

Peter was born in London and grew up in Inverness. He served in both the Royal Air Force and the British Army
during World War II.

Peter always wanted to go to university, but the war started before he left school so, at the age of 18, he joined the RAF instead, receiving his pilot’s badge after just 136 hours of flying. It was one of the proudest moments of his life. However, after witnessing a friend and fellow pilot die after being involved in a plane crash, Peter left the RAF after just two years.

Peter joined the Army in December 1943 and served in the Somerset Light Infantry. He was sent to France a week after the D-Day Landings in one of the first reinforcements to arrive, landing at Sword Beach, Normandy in June 1944. A couple of weeks later, at the age of 23, he was shot in the arm by a sniper in the town of Villers-Bocage.

He was flown back to a hospital in Wales, where a surgeon saved his elbow but had to amputate his arm below the joint, ending his war. He received no compensation and no rehabilitation, but was determined to live a full and independent life.

“I learned to do everything again,” he told Blesma Magazine in an interview several years ago. “It still takes me an hour to shave, shower, dress and make my bed each day, but I do it.”

In the years following the war, Peter reinvented himself as an agricultural expert. He worked in Rhodesia as well as Essex, before studying agriculture at Oxford University. He would go on to work for the Milk Marketing Board in a job that involved driving 40,000 miles a year, and became assistant secretary of Blesma’s Norfolk Branch for several years.

Peter lost his sight later in life as a result of glaucoma and macular degeneration, and became a resident of
Blind Veterans UK’s Brighton Centre after receiving the charity’s support in 2016.

In May 2018, at the age of 96, Peter found love again when he met Nancy Bowstead at Blind Veterans UK’s training and rehabilitation centre. Peter proposed to Nancy a little more than six months later, in November 2018, and the pair made a formal commitment to each other surrounded by family and friends in 2019 at the charity’s chapel in Ovingdean. Peter and Nancy vowed to live out the rest of their lives together.

“I was always determined and stayed positive. I’ve seen people give up, and you can even wish yourself to death,” Peter said of his life. “I’ve been through despondency, but I don’t let it last. I’ve never given up –
and Blesma helps people not to give up, too.”

We will remember him.