WHILE fighting in Europe may have formally ended with the German surrender and the declaration of VE Day on May 8, 1945, millions of British soldiers and Prisoners of War remained hundreds of miles from their families and loved ones.

By 1945, the number of British Armed Forces personnel had peaked at 4.69 million, while some 170,000 British POWs were captured by the German and Italians during the conflict.

In the final days of the war, tens of thousands of captured soldiers were forced to march towards central Germany, in appalling conditions, before their eventual liberation.

One of those was Gunner Samuel Ashworth, of Richard Burch Street, Bury, whose incredible story was featured in the Bury Times on VE Day.

Gunner Ashworth had endured almost five years of captivity after being taken prisoner at St Valery in France.

He had been a regular soldier since 1929, and, after spending some time in the reserves, re-enlisted in 1939.

During his internment he was compelled to work for the Germans, and at one time was employed a at the Siemens engineering firm.

He recalled: “Some of our boys were made to work in the terrible concentration camps where thousands of Jews were burned.

“In the firm where I had to work in 1942, one British soldier was shot because he lit a cigarette against orders, and another, too weak to lift a weight, was also shot immediately.

“The German guards made the boys continue working alongside his body before they removed it in a sack.”

While at the camp, however, Gunner Ashworth received regular gifts from readers of the Bury Times, thanks to its “Cigarettes Fund”, which he said “were very welcome”.

From January 1945 Gunner Ashworth was marched across country by the Nazis, walking hundreds of miles from Upper-Silesia, and across the Carpathian mountains into Bavaria.

Over the treacherous journey his boots fell apart meaning he was forced to wear a pair of borrowed wooden clogs.

At first the prisoners were told that they would have to rely on the local civilians for food supplies. But soon even this became impossible.

Gunner Ashworth revealed: “They began to take us away from towns, and march us around villages, so we stole food from the fields, hoarding it to make a communal meal.

“When we left the camp the Russians were only a few hundred yards off the place. All the Russians with our party were very badly treated, and every few yards there was one lying dead.

“All the guards were old men of 50 or 60, and some were dying on their feet. They had orders to shoot us if we broke rank, but when I became too ill to either walk or eat they allowed me to stay in a private school.”

Two days later he was rescued by the Americans.