WAR veterans from Bournemouth and Poole will be among ex-servicemen returning to World War Two battlefields next month to pay their last respects to lost comrades.

To commemorate the 60th anniversary of VE Day on May 8, Leslie Dell, 81, and Kenneth Coffin, 86, will be taking nostalgic trips back in time.

Leslie, who lives in the Kinson area of Bournemouth, served with the Queen's Own Royal West Kent Regiment, seeing action in Cassino, Italy. He will return to northern Italy on May 11 to visit war graves and for a reunion with a local family who cared for him during the war.

"They were a marvellous family," he said. "I've kept in contact with them all these years and now know four generations. I am looking forward to seeing them all again. It will be a big reunion."

Kenneth, from Poole, was attached to the 51st Highland Division, teaching signalmen and motorbike riders in northern France.

"I went to the Maginot and Siegfried lines in 1940 and was taken prisoner," he recalled. "I managed to escape with a friend. We hid in bushes and laid low for a while. The Germans came back to search for us but failed.

"We stole clothes from a French house and made our way through to southern France but couldn't get through to Spain.

"One woman working for a German commandant befriended us and drove us to Paris. I was eventually recaptured and send to Auschwitz where I spent 15 months.

"One Jewish prisoner kindly made a lady's handbag mirror as a gift for me as I had given him some of my food rations. I still have the gift which my late wife treasured."

Leslie and Kenneth are among 1,822 veterans, spouses, widows and carers travelling overseas to remember comrades who did not return from the conflict, as part of the Big Lottery Fund's Heroes Return scheme.

First published: April 6