John North : A spark of gratitude

UNKNOWN to the dashing young camp commandant, the German prisoners of war were secretly plotting. It would be an incendiary device the likes of which he could never even have imagined.

Rollin Holmes, retired major, treasures it still. "It was the biggest surprise I ever had, the workmanship is extraordinary," he says of the cigarette lighter carved ornately with Big Ben on one side and his initials, RCH, intricately engraved on the other.

His departure from Stadium Camp at Catterick was also marked with a brass plaque - "I still don't know where they got the metal from" - while a few months earlier there'd been a birthday card "from all the German soldiers on the camp".

He doesn't know how they discovered it was his birthday, either - a captive audience, but appreciative, nonetheless.

"I was pretty strict," insists Mr Holmes, "but I suppose they must have thought I was a decent bloke."

Born in West Hartlepool - "belonged West Hartlepool," he says, in proper parlance - he left school at 15, became a saw mills clerk, joined the Army as a 22-year-old private on August 8, 1940, had risen to sergeant within six months, was commissioned in August 1941 and made major soon after his 24th birthday.

It wasn't so much accelerated promotion as fast approaching the world speed record. No less quick off the mark, the former West Hartlepool rugby club player became Northern Command 440 yards champion, too.

"I suppose if you're a private soldier you get mixed up with people with two left feet and all sorts of things," he says modestly.

"If you're a bit athletic, or a bit useful, you're going to stand out. My father had told me the war was going to be a long job, like the last one. I thought that if that was the case, I'd better give it my best shot."

Like a spent bullet, the unintended pun flies harmlessly over his head.

He'd had three years commanding East African troops, learned Swahili, returned to Britain in the week of VE Day and after a month's leave, reported to the orderly room at Stadium Camp on a summer afternoon in 1945.

"They told me the outgoing major was on a tour of the camp with the brigadier-general, and when I caught up with them, the general clearly wasn't very happy.

"He asked who was in charge and the other major pointed and said I was. I thought 'You absolute sh....'."

He tails off gently; probably meant shyster.

The general condemnation was deserved, nonetheless. A bit of a mess?

"Oh, a hell of a mess. Everywhere was dirty, the cookhouse absolutely filthy, the discipline fairly bad.

"The general said he'd be back in a few months and if things hadn't improved someone would be for the high jump.

"You didn't argue with very senior officers. After a rollicking like that, I just resolved to get on with the job."

Stadium Camp held more than 1,000 prisoners - "you couldn't put 1,000 men down like that and expect them just to get on with it" - with another 200 billeted under his overall command at Walworth Castle, near Darlington.

Major Holmes allowed them to build a miniature German castle - a Schloss - at the camp entrance, to have a theatre, a museum and a broadcast relay system.

"We played records in the office which were somehow transmitted all over the camp; I think the Germans appreciated it. They were things that made life a little bit more easy.

"They were only Nissen huts, basic camp beds, no luxuries, but there were always people in prisoner of war camps who could do something special, like the taxidermist who stuffed things for the museum or the chaps who made my lighter.

"Most had been captured early in 1945 and I got the impression were quite pleased to have finished in a warm, comfortable billet rather than fighting in France or the Low Countries."

Still just 27, he retired from military service at the end of 1946, the Germans clearly sorry to see him go and the top brass not very happy, either.

"I don't want to be boastful, but they sent a chap from the War Office to try to get me to change my mind but I wanted to be back in civilian life.

"I was married with a young son who I hadn't seen until he was three and bonding was quite difficult. He just thought I was this feller who'd come to spoil the cushy life he had with his mother."

He moved from West Hartlepool to William Brown's Sawmills headquarters in Darlington, became a director in 1952 and subsequently managing director of the company - now part of Magnet Joinery - which had arrived in Darlington from Staithes, North Yorkshire, in 1956 and employed 700 people.

He was also a director of Darlington FC in the 1950s and 1960s, the days of memorable Cup matches against Arsenal, Chelsea and West Ham United and of capricious club chairmen like George Tait, the Newcastle carpet dealer who so nearly pulled the rug from beneath Feethams feet. "I was on the front page, the rebel director," he recalls. "I knew he was picking the team himself, and I knew equally that he shouldn't be."

Another cutting from his cornucopia tells how William Brown's, coincidentally, erected Darlington FC's east stand - 200ft, nine tiers, corresponding press box - in the two days before the "English Cup" match with Bradford City in December 1905.

"It was quite a record," noted the Echo, though they needn't really have bothered; Quakers went down 4-0.

Now Rollin Holmes is 87 - delightful chap, extraordinarily agile - surrounded in the lounge of his home by splendid paintings by his wife Alice, who's now unwell and in a care home.

Former Round Table president, golfer, man about town, he has never previously talked publicly - "never really had time" - of his 18 months in charge of a thousand war weary Germans.

"It's a part of my life which no-one in Darlington really knows about," he says. "I just wonder if they'll be surprised."