DOPEY civil servants mixed up Sir Michael Caine’s war record in a botched bid to celebrate our heroes.
The Office for Veterans Affairs said he served in Kosovo — a conflict which started when he was 66.
The 90-year-old Londoner, born Maurice Micklewhite, actually fought communists in Korea as part of his national service in 1952.
The government department also mistakenly said The Italian Job star served in the Life Guards regiment.
However he joined the 1st Battalion of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers and was one of 60,000 Brits sent to fight in a conflict known as the “Forgotten War”.
He lost 40 of his comrades and later said he tried hard to forget the horrors he saw.
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But he revealed on one patrol he was convinced he and three others were going to die. He said they survived only by charging the enemy.
He recalled: “There’s nothing more nerve-racking than being in a war. The most nervous you could be is thinking you are going to die and I got into that situation once, really seriously.”
But he went on: “We were going to make it as expensive as we possibly could. And what happened was the Chinese soldiers went towards our line, where they thought we were going, and we went towards their line where they wouldn’t think we were going and we missed each other.”
He said: “It was an incredible thing for my character. I knew I wasn’t a coward.”
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An erroneous online post had pics of Sir Michael, poet Pam Ayres and champ boxer Sir Henry Cooper.
It said: “Did you know these familiar faces are all veterans?”
In June, Sir Michael joined 15 of his old comrades at a memorial service in London.
A government source said: “There was a factual error in one of the Office for Veterans’ Affairs social media posts celebrating veterans’ contributions. When this error was identified it was immediately corrected.”
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