AMONG the many who remembered fallen comrades on Armistice Day was World War II prisoner of war Bob Hollinrake.

Now 92 and virtually housebound, he is a veteran of scores of Remembrance Day parades in Blackburn over the past 65 years.

Bob served as a flight engineer after volunteering for the RAF in 1941 and reached the rank of sergeant — despite the fact he could have stayed safely at home because of his job working in a timber yard.

He flew eight bombing missions over Germany before a fateful night in August 1943, when his Halifax bomber, serial number JD198, which was made by English Electric in Samlesbury, came down in the Channel after a raid on Nuremberg.

Said Bob: “We couldn’t get back, the plane had been too badly damaged and the pilot had to ditch it in the sea.

“He made a good landing and the seven-man crew managed to climb aboard our dinghy before the plane disappeared under the waves after about half an hour.

“Unfortunately, we drifted back to occupied territory and we were all taken into captivity. Although we were taken in August ‘43, it wasn’t until the following January that my family heard I was safe.

“But I spent the rest of the war in four different PoW camps and once when we were moved we had to make a 600-mile trek.”

During it all Bob kept a record of letters, the names of fellow prisoners and his thoughts in poems in an exercise book, written with the stub of his pencil — and he has kept it to this day.

It shows that among the captives were British, American, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand soldiers.

Also recorded are the contents of an American Red Cross Christmas parcel, which included foodstuffs such as Vienna sausages, honey and devilled ham, as well as four packets of chewing gum, 60 cigarettes, a cribbage board, playing cards and two pictures.

After being liberated in May 1945 by the Sixth Airborne, Bob returned home to his wife Eva in Blackburn, who he had met by chance at Preston bus station.

He worked for English Electric in Clayton-le-Moors for 23 years.

Today he still lives in the terraced home, where his late wife was born in the 1920s.