In the week in which we mark Armistice Day, Hereford Times reporter Ian Morgan spoke to two readers who about their experiences during the Second World War.

DON Cornford's three-and-half-years in captivity still haunt the dreams of the former Royal Naval officer.

The man who is a born-and-bred Herefordian caught malaria 26 times, suffered with beri-beri (water-retention to the point of drowning from the inside), and his weight dropped to just 6st.

But Don cannot openly describe the barbaric treatment endured from the Japanese guards because it is still too real in his mind.

He joined the Navy in 1940, at 17 years old, and survived a bomb blast aboard HMS Repulse in December 1941 when he was rescued from the sea.

Don later headed for Singapore, where he was drafted to The Kunwo, but the minelayer was bombed just two weeks later and a piece of shrapnel severed tendons in his foot. Once more he travelled to Singapore, this time with his leg in plaster. But Japanese troops entered the hospital in which he was staying and the first of many orders came quickly.

Allied casualties were stretchered into trucks and transported to barracks near Changi prison.

He recalled: "We travelled four days to Thailand in cattle trucks, 35 men in each, fed rice twice a day. We eventually arrived in Bangpong, thinking it was the end of our journey. But the fittest had to walk through jungle in temperatures of 40 degrees with high humidity, many died on the way."

He added: "Anyone resting was beaten with thick bamboo sticks. Hundreds died of cholera and beri beri, and also from sheer exhaustion and hopelessness. Our officers were made to work and were humiliated at every opportunity but still we sang all the rousing songs we knew."

Finally, after three-and-a-half long years, news filtered through that atom bombs had been dropped on Japan and freedom beckoned for Don.

Just weeks after leaving the POW camp Don met his future wife, Eva Townhill. The couple married in Hereford three weeks after meeting and have been married for almost 58 years.

A tiny pair of red shoes on a wagon ..

THE sight of a pair of tiny red shoes will remain in the memory of Leighton Bowen (left) for the rest of his life.

The former commando, now 87, and living in Hay-on-Wye, was captured and spent four long years as a German Prisoner of War.

Leighton was posted to a sugar factory at Ratibor in Upper Silesia, where he noticed the harrowing image.

Leighton was positioned above the line of rail open-topped trucks and would regularly see harvesting equipment and machinery pass to the captured wheat prairies of the Ukraine. One day he saw wagonloads of clothing followed by wagonloads of footwear and a pair of shiny shoes caught his attention.

He recalled: "On one of the wagons and placed seemingly carefully in a corner, and so conspicuous, was a tiny pair of red shoes. A feeling of terrible bitterness came over me. I was completely overcome with the deepest grief. After all the years that have passed, the memory of those little red shoes will stay with me until the day I die."

He also worked at a tile factory in Hohenbirken where prisoners needing a dentist would be taken to barracks at Jagerndorf, Czechoslovakia.

One day he casually strolled across to a nearby lock-up wooden shed and peered through a large glass window.

Inside he saw a long shelf with open topped, large brown paper bags, containing grey coloured powder or ash.

"Something, suddenly stabbed at my inside. These were the mortal remains of thousands of ill-fated victims of Hitler's gas chambers," he said. "As I stood almost transfixed, I recalled only a short while previously, the wagonloads of clothing."