Alan Tristram remembers the survivors he met who had vivid memories of their part in the Second World War.

‘When I worked in London one of my friends, an ex Royal Navy rating, explained how his ship rammed German caiques heading for Crete.

He said they returned to Alexandria with the wreckage of one German boat still wrapped around the bows of their ship with its cargo of bodies.

Another chap in Independent Television News, a hard-bitten former commando, said he’d been in a Combined Operations’ landing craft.

They were put ashore near a rail embankment on the French coast about the time of D-Day.

He said they charged up the embankment firing wildly. Then they discovered the ‘enemy’ were unarmed labourers working for the Todt organization.

Often it seemed a matter of chance whether you lived or died.

But at least these men, and others I met, were on the right side in the struggle against the Nazis.