31 BBC Robert Reid

I think it was one of the most moving experiences of my life going into the Seagenheim prison camp after its liberation by General Patton's troops. There were 1200 British troops there, men from all parts of the Commonwealth, and my colleague Bill Castello and I were the first Englishmen they'd seen.

They first free Englishmen, as one of them said, in five years. Well, I can't just begin to describe what it felt like meeting those men. It was one of those occasions when all you could do was to ring hands by the score, to hug and be hugged, to slap each other on the back, to do anything rather than to attempt to talk.

We were all too full for words. Then when we got over the first gulp of emotion, the things they wanted to know, the torrent of information which poured out from both sides, the first they wanted to make of us when we wanted to make the fuss of them.

I went into one of the hospital wards where men were lying weak with exhaustion and dysentery. Yet not a complaint did I hear. Nothing but thankfulness for deliverance. And then that eager stream of enquiries from men who raised themselves weekly on their elbows called out to me to come over and shake hands with them,

then fired questions at me about almost every town in Britain. There were East Enders who wanted to know what London looked like after the bombing. There was a stock-port lad whose folk lived not far away from my own home.

Then there was a heckman white boy and a lad from Salford in the bunk above him. They arrived with another Yorkshireman and set them bantering each other about the possibilities of being home for Whit Monday in time to see either Lancashire or Yorkshire wallop each other at Old Trafford or Headingley.