They are men like his father who fought in the Far East during the Second World War.

"I don't think they receive the recognition they deserve," the Whitnash Road man said this week.

Royal Engineer Joseph Shepherd went to France as a 21-year-old, and was shipped off after Dunkirk to the jungles of Malaya to fight the Japanese.

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He was captured following the disastrous fall of Singapore in February 1942 and marched 600 miles through deep snow to Jinsen, then on to the Konan prisoner of war camp.

He spent much of his early 20s in such confinement, sometimes enduring appalling treatment from guards.

Yet he and his fellow captives found the humanity amid the atrocities, horrifying medical 'experiments' and long hours at the salt mines, furnaces and railways to pen letters home of understated defiance.

Of the 3,500 men taken along with Joe, just 335 were left when the Russians arrived in August 1945. Overall 35,000 POWs were captured, with one in ten dying thousands of miles from home.

Cholera, beri beri, dysentery and malaria were rife and servicemen were forced to work on back-breaking projects from sunrise until sunset, sometimes surviving only on meagre beakers of rice.

But, unlike the VE Day celebrations of May 8 1945, when thousands poured onto London streets in a very public display of jubilation and thanks, when Joe came home after six-and-a-half years away, he stepped off the train onto a deserted platform at Shrewsbury station, a forgotten soldier.

With VJ Day later this month, son Terry said: "He had nightmares for quite some time and his health wasn't too clever. But what really upset him was that when the Second World War 'ended' and there were all the celebrations in Trafalgar Square, the Japanese prisoners were still there.

"He never talked much about it. I just found all of this stuff in a drawer after he died in 1992 - including a letter from the war office to his parents saying he had been killed in action in Malaya. I think he wanted to forget, but that doesn't mean he should be forgotten by others. He felt that had happened - he used to say 'we are a forgotten army'."

Of 3,500 in the camp, only 335 survived
In an interview to mark the 40th anniversary of VJ Day in 1985, Joe spoke of the long march to Konan, and the "wicked" treatment which awaited.

He said: "We lost count of the days and weeks it took us to get there. So many died on the way. Those who fell at the roadside were shot."

Konan was a feeder camp for a notorious prison nearby where medical 'experiments' including needless amputations were carried out.

Joe added: "They would count men out in groups of five and ten and just march them out. I guess I was lucky because whenever they came for us, I always happened to be out working in the salt mines or somewhere.

"Some of the atrocities were just wicked. They were very brutal and would burn you just for fun. There were 3,500 of us when we first arrived at the camp. When we were liberated there were only 335 left."

Joe had all his bottom teeth knocked out with a rifle butt, but escaped comparatively lightly.

Other veterans from his native Shropshire recalled random slashings with bayonets and punishment for minor offences which included being hung upside down by the feet, while water was poured up the nose and the stomach repeatedly punched. Men were locked in cages four feet high and forced to crouch for days, or staked out to die in freezing temperatures.

Death lists were posted daily and contained hundreds of new names when regular bouts of sickness spread through the camps.

"It was surprising how fast they died. One day they would be feeling lousy and the next day they would be dead," said one of Joe's fellow POWs.

To their guards they were marked with shame for surrendering, yet at the depths of cruel treatment, as the Japanese war effort began to crack, Joe was still concerned those at home should keep their chin up.

Despite almost certainly believing he would be executed if Allied troops got close, in a letter dated 1944 he wrote: "I have one ambition after the war is over - to spend a nice holiday with Mr Grub at the seaside resort. I know he will make up for lost time."

VJ Day is August 15.