'Despair, illness, no hope — no idea of when this war was going to end. Apparently forgotten by our friends."

The haunting words of a Greater Manchester soldier who was held as a prisoner of war in Thailand and forced to work on the infamous Thailand to Burma 'Death Railway', immortalised in the 1957 war film The Bridge on the River Kwai.

Maurice Naylor, a Manchester University graduate who was born in Flixton, Trafford , was 24 when he was held captive by the Japanese in the Far East.

And for Maurice, and many thousands like him, every morning began exactly the same way — for three long years. He was lucky to survive. Many didn't — losing their lives to rampant disease and illness, brutal beatings and the unthinkable conditions 'working' on the railway's construction.

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