HEARTLESS vandals have left a 95-year-old war veteran trapped in his own home after they broke into his garage and smashed his electric buggy.

Cecil Beazley was devastated when his carer arrived at his home in Talbot Village, Bournemouth, to find the locked wooden garage had been broken into and the buggy's control box ripped out.

The intruders also wrenched off the door of a greenhouse in Mr Beazley's garden during the incident, which is thought to have happened on the night of Tuesday, January 9.

Mr Beazley, a member of a top-secret saboteur squad in the Home Guard during the Second World War, is only able to walk around his house with the aid of a Zimmer frame and a stick.

He relied on the buggy to go out shopping and socialise with friends.

Police officers told Mr Beazley they believed the £4,000 buggy was beyond repair.

Mr Beazley said: "I can't go outside my gate now.

"I used to go out in the buggy to the post office and to get my pension.

"I used to go down by the university, the King's Arms pub and to the opticians.

"Now I feel lost - to think I had that chair and it was so useful and now I haven't got it."

The former market gardener, who has no children, joined the Home Guard when war broke out and was later asked to join an undercover group which would have carried out sabotage had Hitler invaded.

The group used to meet twice a week in a top-secret underground bunker at Woodyates near Salisbury to practise survival techniques and learn how to handle explosives and guns.

It was so hush-hush that not even Mr Beazley's wife was let in on the secret.

After the war Mr Beazley had his own smallholding and supplied many prominent businesses across Bournemouth with his produce.

A police spokesman said: "There is never an excuse for this sort of thing. It really is heartless.

"Anybody who knows who is responsible would be doing the community a service if they told the police."

Anyone with information about the incident should contact Dorset Police on 01202 222 222 or call Crimestoppers in confidence on 0800 555 111.