Death march soldiers are reunited

Stan Wade and Doug Hawkins did not realise they lived just miles apart

Two former prisoners of war forced by Nazis to take part in death marches at the end of World War II have met for the first time.

Stan Wade and Doug Hawkins, both of Basingstoke, Hampshire, were held at Stalag-344 Lamsdorf in Poland.

As the Nazis retreated they forced nearly 80,000 prisoners to march hundreds of miles out of Poland in harsh winter conditions. Many died.

Neither man has ever met other veterans of the long march.

If you lagged behind, they shot you and left you there Doug Hawkins

They decided to meet after learning of each other's existence in the same town, living just miles apart.

Mr Wade was marched by the Nazis on to Landshut in southern Germany, while Mr Hawkins was marched for 1,000 miles north to Hanover.

Mr Hawkins said: "We were told about three days [before] that we were going to move because the Russians were coming through.

"If you lagged behind, they shot you and left you there.

"Some of them [prisoners] they didn't even shoot, they left them on the side of the road and they just froze to death.

"It was pretty horrific."

Describing the march, Mr Wade said: "There was nothing, you just kept going.

"We used to get a bit of soup occasionally. I can't remember what I got it in, because I had nothing."

Both said it had been hard to talk to other people about their own experiences.

"Because we can converse, we know what we went through," Mr Hawkins added.

"It's broken the ice," he said.