THEY were both in the same half-starved prisoner-of-war (PoW) camp in Poland and yet until this week they had never met.

Doug Hawkins and Stan Wade, from Basingstoke, will never forget the harsh German PoW camp or the notorious “death march” they endured.

So when they discovered they lived round the corner, they were eager to meet up for quiet drink in the centre of town.

Mr Hawkins, 85, said: “It is amazing to think we live so close to each other. A lot of people would find it hard to believe what we have been through.

“You would not think how cruel people could be to their fellow men – you never forget.”

He found out about Mr Wade through contact with the Basingstoke Archaeological and Historical Society.

Both were prisoners of war in Stalag 344, a camp in Poland during the Second World War.

Mr Wade, an army driver, was captured outside Dunkirk in 1940 as the invading German army closed in on the British and French forces.

Mr Hawkins was a gunner in the Cheshire Regiment, and was taken prisoner by the Hermann Goering Panzer Division outside Rome in 1943 and then transported to Poland.

More than 60 years later, the men recalled similar memories of the camp, with its unmatched comradeship and its characters like “Happy Harry”, a fitness fanatic who used to run round the field. They also recall the making of moonshine alcohol.

For Mr Hawkins, of Ravel Close, Brighton Hill, meeting Mr Wade, who lives about four miles away in Chequers Road, in Eastrop, was emotional simply because they shared the same terrible ordeal.

Mr Wade, now a sprightly 93-year-old, said: “It is great to know somebody else went through more or less the same experience.”

But they also recalled the darker side to camp life – the crippling uncertainty, food running out, untreated illness and cruel camp guards rifle-butting – or even killing – men struggling with their work duties.

Conditions worsened when the camp was evacuated in 1945 as the Russian Red Army advanced into Poland.

They were forced to walk more than 700 miles to PoW camps in Germany in what was known as the Long March.

They walked in the bitter winter cold, sometimes in blizzards, leaving many with frostbite and tragically killing off hundreds of men just a few months before the end of the war.

Angry German civilians would also try to attack them.

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

They survived the experience and were eventually liberated by Allied forces sweeping into Germany.

But the deprivations of the camp and the terror of the epic march have left an indelible mark, one that the new friends can now share.

Mr Wade said: “After the war my wife told me to forget about it, but you can’t, not after something like that.”

And in another twist, another PoW from the same camp, Raymond Parr, 88, of Mitchell Avenue, in Hartley Wintney, has since contacted Mr Hawkins.