Ex-soldiers ready to fight over Shrewsbury's Copthorne Barracks

New plans will see the site transformed with 229 houses and apartments. Proposals went on display for the ex-Army site in Shrewsbury earlier this month, including turning the landmark keep at the entrance into apartments and the former parade ground into a "village green".

The ex-servcicemen, who have met to discuss what action to take, said they knew they wouldn't be able to fully save the site, but hoped that a small area might be saved so that they could continue holding their reunions on the site.

Many of them have called for the current buildings to be converted into a rehabilitation centre for military personnel, as a way of giving back to the people who lost their lives after being based at the barracks.

John "Titch" Redfern, 58, said: "To any soldier, the parade ground is hallowed ground. We march there to honour the dead.

"To be leaving somewhere like this, they're losing the aspect of those men who fought and died for their country.

"All we're asking is for a small portion. All our memories are there. They've been holding our reunion at the football ground and it's not the same. There's no heart in that place.

"We go there to have a drink and say hello. At the barracks, all the happy times, all the sad times were there. You can't do that at a different venue.

"It's the kind of job you've got to have been in, up to your eyeballs in mud, to understand what the feeling is. If you haven't done that, you don't understand, and that's where the problem is coming from."

Edward Lowe, 58, said: "We've got to be realistic. We can't stop it, but we just want a piece of it. It's our history.

"We want to take our reunion, which would help businesses out.

"There's a lot of people who go to those barracks who fought for their country, and these developers just want to make money out of it.

"If we need to make a campaign we will. If we need to march from Shrewsbury town centre to the barracks, we will.

"We've fought before, we'll fight again. They think we've gone away, but we haven't. We've served our country, now we want them to serve us."

John Sleight, 62, said: "I'd like to keep some of it.

"It could be a rehab centre, and there needs to be somewhere for the reunion to be held.

"You go through them gates and there are memories. The hair goes up on the back of your neck. I came out in 1975 – it still does that.

"You go through the football ground and it's nothing like that.

"The soldiers there have given their lives, and they're getting nothing now.

"Less people will travel to the reunions if they're held at the football stadium.

"We had comradeship and it should be at the depot. I think the MOD should do something instead of fobbing us off."

Michael Kilner, 62, travelled from Sheffield to defend the barracks.

He said: "That's our home, and a football pitch isn't right for us. There's only half as many people turning up.

"People have just said if it's not at the depot, I'm not bothered."

The developer, Jones Lang LaSalle, hopes to retain the keep as a way of celebrating the history of the site.

Elle Cass, director of planning and development at Jones Lang LaSalle, said when the plans were revealed that it was important to have a positive development on the brownfield site.

For more information about the veterans' appeal, see the Bring Sir John Moore Barracks Back Facebook group.