Seventy years ago today, British troops liberated the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in northern Germany.
One of those was Saltburn war hero Eddie Straight, now 94, whose military service took him from his seaside home into the blitz, Buckingham Palace, Bergen-Belsen and the Burmese jungle.
Now, on the anniversary of the liberation of the camp where around 70,000 people died during the Holocaust, Eddie’s story will be told in a new documentary by acclaimed Saltburn film-maker Craig Hornby.
Mr Hornby said: “Stories like this don’t come along everyday and Eddie’s had to be recorded.
“One of the most defining events in global history suddenly has a unique local dimension and it really brings it home.”
Eddie now enjoys a quieter life in a Saltburn retirement home, but after joining the army aged 19 he was in command of 60 convicts from Dartmoor Prison within a year, pulling people from burning buildings during the blitz.
He was then transferred to guard Buckingham Palace, and during air raids chaperone one Princess Elizabeth down to the shelter beneath.
Eddie went on to join the 11th Armoured tank regiment, rising to the rank of Company Sergeant Major.
In June 1944, he landed at Normandy with his company and for nine months they fought their way towards Germany.
On April 15 1945, Eddie was ordered to help liberate a prisoner of war camp outside Hanover.
The Saltburn man became one of the first outsiders to witness the horrors that within days shook the world.
60,000 people were imprisoned in a camp built for 10,000, mostly starving and with no water supply.
Epidemics of typhus, typhoid and dysentery had broken out, with some 13,000 corpses rotting around the camp.
He helped to capture the remaining SS officers and guards and forced them to begin burying the dead in mass graves.
When the relief effort was fully underway, Eddie was ordered to push on but before he left, he entered the private quarters of captured commandant Josef Kramer aka ‘The Beast of Belsen’.
There he also liberated a few souvenirs including Kramer’s ceremonial sword which he still has - and is included in an exhibition featuring the first screening of the 30 minute film, ‘Eddie Straight: To Hell and Back’ at Middlesbrough’s Dorman Museum from 7pm-9pm.
After German surrender a few weeks later, Eddie was sent on another mission - to the Burmese jungle to fight the Japanese.
He was given command of a hundred Nigerians of the Royal West African Frontier Force.
For three months, they experienced brutal fighting in stifling jungle conditions.
When Japan surrendered in August ‘45, Eddie delivered his men back to Nigeria and flew back to Britain and to his Skelton sweetheart Ina Bennison.
Despite being wounded by German and Japanese bayonets and bullets, Eddie survived the war and lived to tell the tale 70 years later.
Back home, Eddie got a job with Middlesbrough steel-making giant Dorman Long, later British Steel and worked there until retirement in 1985.
In the late 40s and 50s, Eddie returned to Nigeria, with wife Ina, on a number of occasions for holidays all paid for by his Nigerian ‘Burma Boys’.
He was also invited back to Buckingham Palace a number of times for functions by the Queen.
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