As part of the VE Day celebrations, Second World War veteran John Caygill describes his experiences to Lucy Richardson.

AT the age of only 16, John Caygill signed up for the British Army without telling his parents. He went on to serve in North Africa and was held as a prisoner of war in Italy, Germany and Poland.

Now 87, Mr Caygill has been reliving his memories as part of the VE Day celebrations at Wynyards Woods Care Home, near Sedgefield, County Durham, which is a world away from his incarceration more than 60 years ago. The veteran, from Haverton Hill, near Billingham, said: “As I was too young, I was told to go outside and when I came in again to add a year to my age.

“I didn’t tell my parents what I was doing as I knew they would try to talk me out of it.”

He joined the East Yorkshire Regiment and when he was old enough, sent to the desert in Africa with the Fifth Battalion of the 69th Brigade.

He was captured by the Italians and shipped to a prisoner of war camp just outside Tripoli where, to his surprise and delight, he was reunited with his older brother, Kenneth.

The Italians capitulated in August 1942 and the prisoners were freed. But instead of making their way to Switzerland as they had planned, the pair spent time working in Italy, where they were recaptured by the Germans.

“We had been able to run rings around the Italians, but we were very concerned about how we would be treated by the Germans,” Mr Caygill said.

Along with his brother, he was taken to a camp on the Polish border, where French Canadian soldiers were being made to work in the forests.

“The tools we were given couldn’t cut sticks.

One day, two soldiers from Sunderland and one from Bishop Auckland asked for better tools and two were shot dead,” he said.

Mr Caygill recalled the brother he idolised being whipped as he was too weak to work making road blocks to stop the Russian tanks.

He said: “I was very hot-tempered and had to be held back. My brother always said ‘do not let them get to you’.”

The worst aspects of being held prisoner were the lice and hunger, Mr Caygill said.

Despite the hardships, he said they ran rings around the Germans just as they had their Italian captors.

“There was home brew in the camp, and my brother used to climb over the barbed wire to go to the pub every night.

“Food was my thing – I used to barter with the guards for flour and make hundreds of pancakes in ovens we built next to the pipes.

When I think back, I think we were very lucky.”

After being liberated by the Americans, Mr Caygill returned home with Kenneth to a hero’s welcome.

The brothers married two sisters, both had two sons and a daughter and both eventually worked as foremen at the nearby ICI plant.

Mr Caygill, who is hoping to make his annual pilgrimage to France to mark D-Day as a member of the Normandy Veterans Association next month, said he is very happy to live out his days at the Wynyard Woods Care Home.

“I still love my food. I’m the only person here to have a cooked English breakfast every day,” he said.