One of the Navy’s last living links with the Grand Fleet of World War I was treated to a 100th birthday celebration at the spiritual home of the Green Berets.

Former bandsman Stephen Butcher joined the Royal Marines Band at the age of just 13 when the RN was still crossing swords with the Kaiser’s Navy.

For the next two and a half decades he served his country in two world wars and the inter-war peace, at the barracks of Portsmouth and Deal and in mighty warships such as HMS Barham and the carrier HMS Glorious.

Mr Butcher joined up in 1917, when the drum master turned a blind eye to his height and age, but his instructors soon found fault with the eager young musician.

“I was supposed to blow the bugle at my first parade,” he recalled.

“It was a windy day, and just as I was about to play, the wind blew up the skirts of three young Wrens. I couldn’t stop laughing. I had to do an hour’s marching as punishment.”

Before the Great War was over, the young buglar found himself in the veteran cruiser HMS Hyacinth, patrolling off South Africa.

A generation later, the sailor was off the coast of Normandy aboard HMS Enterprise, escorting USS Nevada and supporting the bombardment of German positions in the invasion of mainland Europe.

Enterprise proved to be Mr Butcher’s final ship, as he was demobbed upon the war’s end in 1945.

His 100th birthday was marked with a party at the RM Museum in Eastney, Portsmouth – in 1903, the birthplace of the Corps’ School of Music.