AFTER fighting a valiant rearguard action in which he called upon the padre to give him covering fire Major Robin Medley left the field of battle still in defiant mood.

Clutching his receipt for the £30 parking fine he was forced to pay after a skirmish with Cwmbran magistrates, the man who fought the Germans at Dunkirk and the Japanese in Burma said: "I am still angry. None of this should have been necessary. I am not a criminal."

The first shot in the battle which ended up with Major Medley, 84, of Llanvair Kilgeddin, near Abergavenny, in court was fired on May 13 at 2.03 pm precisely when a traffic warden slapped a ticket on his silver Volkswagen parked in Maindee Parade, Newport.

Major Medley was nearby in the Conservative Club attending the monthly meeting of Burma veterans.

Mr Jamie Dewar, prosecuting, told magistrates that Major Medley had parked in a residents' parking area without an appropriate permit. A residents' parking sign was five metres away.

Initially, Major Medley denied illegal parking but changed his plea when told that he would be allowed character witnesses.

He said he had seen the dotted lines marking out the parking area but had not seen the notice restricting its use to residents.

"Some of the people who go to the meetings are in their 90s. There should be parking outside this meeting place for them. I made a genuine mistake," he said.

And then he fired his big guns. Every inch the retired officer he said in clear, ringing tones that having made such a mistake, he was distressed that his name should be entered on the police computer as a criminal.

"There is a growing belief that cars are being targeted as a way of raising money," he added. "The hounding of motorists is unjust and it is not what our fathers in the 1914-1918 war and those of us who served during the last war for six years thought we were fighting for."

Having read the Kohima Epitaph which forms the central part of the Remembrance Service he added: "We ask the police to catch criminals, not to make them."

The Reverend Nigel Burge, chaplain of Usk Royal British Legion, lay down a heavy field of fire from the witness box.

Magistrates had already heard that Major Medley, when a serving officer, had been chairman of the Joint Emergency Planning Committee and involved in liaison with the police.

Mr Burge added that Major Medley was a churchwarden, a keen supporter of ex-service charities and of the St John Ambulance Brigade and the Scouting movement.

He had also been mentioned in despatches in Burma. As magistrates retired to consider their verdict Major Medley told them: "There. You've heard my obituary."

Mr Robin Curzon, a former Chindit, chairman of the Gwent Burma Star Association, and one of Major Medley's supporting troops, said after the hearing: "Dotted white lines in Abergavenny mean that you can park for an hour or two. Robin made a mistake. It's not clear what the lines mean."

It was an intense battle, but one fought to gentlemanly rules. As the major retired from the field there were smiles from both the bench and the prosecution.