A WAR hero who lived and worked in Worcester has died at the age of 92 - and his daughter has paid tribute to the man she did not meet until she was five years old because he was being held a prisoner of war during the Second World War.

Details of Sergeant Major William Eade's capture were featured in an article on September 13, 1940, in the Worcester News, then called the Evening News and Times.

His regiment had surrendered to the German Army at Dunkirk three months earlier.

Daughter Pauline Lowe, who lives in Hereford, said the soldier, who served with the Kings Own Scottish Borderers, told how he escaped from the Hohenfols Stalag camp in Germany. "He swam across a river which had ice blocks floating on it," she said.

"How he got across he didn't know, but on the other side he thought he was going to be killed by wild boar in the woods. There was a field with turnips which he dug up with his bare hands from the frozen mud and ate them raw."

He escaped on several occasions, but was always caught.

When the camp was liberated at the end of the war, he helped the sick and wounded get home before returning to his wife Olive at their home in White Ladies Walk, Worcester.

He left the Army in 1946 and briefly took up a teaching post at Worcester's St Paul's School - which no longer exists - before he became a civil servant working at the then Air Ministry in Whittington Road, Worcester.

In 1957 he was promoted and relocated to Kent before moving to Hereford 20 years later.

His wife died in 1993 so he moved to Woodstock Road, St John's, Worcester, before living as a Chelsea Pensioner at the Royal Hospital in Chelsea He died on Friday from a chest infection after a fall broke his hip three weeks ago.

"He was a good dad to me," said Mrs Lowe. "He was a very quiet man. As children, we had to be very clean, everything had to be just right. Everybody always said he was a real gentleman."

Sgt Maj Eade was the last surviving member of the army to hold the rank of WO3.

He leaves behind sons Roy, aged 61, and Colin, aged 51, who live in Kent, three grandchildren and a great grandson.

Sgt Maj Eade's funeral will be held in Chelsea on Wednesday, March 14.