Veteran's plea to reunite heroes for 80th anniversary

HERO Geoff Roberts has issued an SOS in the hope of reuniting his chums at the scene of their finest hour.

- Giles Sheldrick

The warrior was a 19-year-old private in the 7th Battalion King's Own Scottish Borderers as part of a crack team sent to help liberate Naziheld Netherlands during the Second World War.

On September 17, 1944, Geoff flew from the UK alongside two pilots and 28 troops in a 30-seater Horsa glider towed by an RAF plane.

The braveheart, captured during the assault and held as a prisoner of war, was one of 765 men from the battalion dropped on to the Continent but by the end of the Battle of Arnhem 112 were dead, 76 evacuated back to Britain and 577 reported missing.

During the bloody battle some 35,000 Allies valiantly fought the Germans for nine days in some of the fiercest fighting of the war.

It resulted in the award of five Victoria Crosses, four of them posthumous, and is immortalised in the 1977 epic A Bridge Too Far directed by Richard Attenborough.

Poignant