He attended Sudbury Grammar School and his first job when he left school in 1936 was as a reporter on the Suffolk and Essex Free Press, where he worked until he was called up in 1940.

On November 3, 1941, Douglas married Eileen Florence Messant from Bulmer. Douglas was a keen sportsman and played for Sudbury Hotspur before the war.

In his last letter home Douglas (pictured right) describes a football match in France in which he had taken part.

In the autumn of 1943 the 3rd battallion of the Suffolk Regiment joined the Guards Armoured Division and in June, 1944, they landed in Normandy.

Douglas died, aged 24, on July 19 when his unit came under attack. The lance corporal was killed instantly when a mortar shell landed beside him.

He is buried in Banneville-la-Campagne war cemetery.

A year after his death his widow placed a message in memory of him in the Free Press: "We loved him, yes, no-one can tell, how deep, how deeply, and how well; Proudly he answered his country's call and gave his life to save us all."

Albert Bear was born in 1921, son of Walter and Jane Bear, of Melford Road. He too was a reporter on the Suffolk and Essex Free Press before working as a clerk at Vanner and Fennell Silk Mills. Albert, who was in the Territorial Army, was called up at the outbreak of the Second World War.

In October, 1941, the 5th Battallion of the Suffolks sailed from Liverpool , arriving in Singapore on January 29, 1942. The Japanese attacked on February 9 and Singapore fell six days later.

Albert, a lance corporal, was taken prisoner and forced to work on the notorious Burma Railway. About 13,000 prisoners of war and 100,000 civilians died during its construction. Albert died just days after being liberated, on August 22, 1945, aged 24. He is buried in Kanchanaburi Cemetery in Thailand.