GEORGE Wilson spent three-and-a-half years in a PoW camp in Singapore.

Every day he would wake up to a long slog, working to build a railway under the command of Japanese troops.

Then one day, the world changed. There would be no more war and no more oppression. Mr Wilson was finally free.

Sixty years on Mr Wilson, of Downham Way, Downham, says he remembers the moment as if it was yesterday.

He said: "We were in the camp when this Japanese soldier came up to us and said the war was over.

"I just felt a bit numb. I couldn't believe it."

Mr Wilson, now 87, admits he did not think he would see the day when war ended.

He said: "When we saw our chaps dying in the conflict and heard about the atrocities happening around the world we feared what would happen to us."

The grandfather-of-13 says the treatment he received from the Japanese while a prisoner was "brutal".

He remembers one occasion where he saw a series of human heads stuck on poles, which were embedded into the ground.

Mr Wilson added: "You never forget something like that. I can still remember it vividly to this day.

"We were marched all over the place and saw dead bodies pretty much every day. It was awful."