Harry Rossney was born Helmut Rosettenstein in the Baltic port of Koenigsberg, and partly raised in a Berlin orphanage. Even now, nearly 88 years later, he still speaks with a heavy German accent. Six decades ago on a moonless Devon beach, his accent nearly cost him his life. As a member of the Pioneer Corps he was dispatched to the North Devon coast one evening, armed only with a pick-axe handle, and ordered to keep watch for an enemy invasion. Unfortunetly, a squad of soldiers was also patrolling the beach. “Halt! Who goes there?” was the cry that rang out in the dark.

Harry identified himself – and immediately heard a rifle being cocked in front of him. “He heard my accent and thought he’d found the enemy…I thought that was it – this was how my war was going to end. But a sergeant’s voice shouted ‘Hold your fire!’, which allowed me to explain who I was. I don’t think they understood, but that split second saved my life.”

Mr Rossney, a craftsman and signwriter, was drafted to Normandy on D-Day, where his skills were employed to hand-write the names of fallen Allied soldiers on the temporary crosses that eventually became Commonwealth War Graves. There were so many, he said, he could barely keep up.

“I loved my country but it rejected me,” said Mr Rossney, who married 53 years ago and still lives in North-West London. “Now, I’m as English as I can possibly be. But it was different back then. My Christian name couldn’t really be more German, and everyone at that time was suspicious. I suppose it was pointless to have an English name with an accent like mine, but that’s the name I took. I just looked through the telephone book and picked one out.”