The Sentinel will this year commemorate those who fought for our country during two world wars with a special online section at www.thisisstaffordshire.co.uk

It will feature exclusive videos from 11 soldiers who took part in the Second World War, as well as footage of the battles in which they fought. In the first in a week-long series of Remembrance Day features, reporter Richard Ault tells some of the veterans' stories...

VETERAN Tom Berrisford came so close to death during some of the fiercest fighting of the Second World War, he was given his own body bag.

The 88-year-old was shot twice in the stomach and left to die by stretcher-bearers who thought he was too badly wounded to save. Orderlies even crossed his arms across his chest and straightened his legs so it would be easier to slide him into the body bag.

But it is the memory of the man he shot at close range which haunts him to this day, more than 60 years after he was involved in D-Day operations in France in 1944. There he served with the 1st Battalion of the Herefordshire Regiment, which was part of the 11th Armoured Division.

Mr Berrisford, of Lightwood, said: "On the first day in action, the Germans brought all the artillery out on us and wiped out virtually a whole battalion.

"I only shot one man at close range, and that memory still haunts me, I still see his face even today, after all these years.

"I'd always been a good shot and early on, I think the second day after we got dug in, they sent for me at the command trench. I went into a dug-out and they said they had a present for me. There was a sniper's rifle and a sniper's suit. That was a bit hairy and I was doing that for a bit.

"I used to go out probably about an hour before first light and get into the roof of this cottage which partly had been blown off. I'd sit up there with this perfect, telescopic sight. You could see the enemy lighting cigarettes and chatting to one another.

"A puff of smoke from where I was hiding and they would have blown me to kingdom come. So I never fired a shot, I used to fire one into the floor before I returned just in case the barrel was checked to see if it had been fired."

Mr Berrisford took part in the Battle of Caen, between June and July of 1944. Then, towards the end of the war, he was part of the advance on Bergen-Belsen – the infamous concentration camp which was the first to be discovered by British forces and where Anne Frank was detained. He was with a platoon of infantry, supporting tanks, who were sent into battle. Because of the roar of the engines, he couldn't hear the shots going off – but he could see his friends dropping one by one, as they were hit by enemy fire. He said: "They killed the rest of the lads and then I got two bullets through the stomach. I got this big hole in my back, it went right through. I was bleeding through the back and front and from the mouth.

"The stretcher-bearers came up waving flags and they said, 'It's Berry, he's had it', and they left me.

"So they left me there to die and I knew I was going to die.

"Two of my pals saw me. We all carried field dressing in our pockets, which you easily ripped open, and they used the field dressing to stem the bleeding.

"They got me on a stretcher and I was praying to be hit again, I knew I'd had it, that it was going to be a fatal.

"They got me to the first aid post and I was in agony. The orderlies had got me then and they brought me a body bag and they kept straightening my legs and crossing my hands across my chest ready to slide me into the bag, so I ran it rather close. I was taken to Celle, which was the nearest town to Bergen-Belsen. The Scots had just taken the general hospital, and that saved my life. I was taken there and I was on a table having major surgery performed by a team led by a German surgeon.

"I was with a load of others who were critically wounded, Germans and British. The others kept on dying and getting wheeled out, it was like Russian roulette.

"Because of my injury, I didn't see the horror camp, which was the first to be discovered. I got shot at the gates.

"No-one knew about the concentration camps then.

"I saw the camp commandant, Josef Kramer, while I was in hospital. He was a huge, dark man. He had three days' growth of beard when I saw him."

Kramer was to be found guilty of war crimes and hanged.

Mr Berrisford spent 12 months in hospital after the end of the war, while he recovered from his injuries.

The widower, who has two children, two grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, became a barber, then later worked at Keele University.