By Robert Hall BBC News Correspondent

Fifty years after their last meeting, 1,000 former prisoners of war gathered in Northumberland for a party held in their honour.

The event, held to mark the Queen's Golden Jubilee, was attended by survivors of both German and Japanese PoW camps.

Theirs is a comradeship forged during years of suffering and deprivation, their numbers dwindling with each reunion.

But a comradeship that drew them from across the UK to one tiny hamlet in Northumberland, for a party thrown by one man determined to recognise them in this Jubilee year.

I decided to show they hadn't been forgotten

Brian Burnie, reunion organiser

Brian Burnie decided to issue the invitation after meeting one ex-PoW who told him few people had ever shown an interest in his story.

He said: "It was so sad that I decided to show they hadn't been forgotten."

Among almost a thousand old friends who gathered at Doxford Hall, there were so many shared memories from camps in Europe and the Far East.

Former Cameron Highlander Walter Thompson narrowly avoided capture when two German soldiers demanded food at the Italian farmhouse where he was sheltering.

Nightmares

"We were in civilian clothes, and spoke in pidgin Italian," he told me.

"The Germans sat right opposite and left with no idea they were dining with escaped PoWs."

Many of those gathered on Friday wore the badge of the Far Eastern PoW Association.

More than 20,000 never returned from captivity in Thailand and Burma, but Derek Gilbert, captured at Singapore, says his nightmares have ceased.

Walter Thompson: Narrowly avoided capture

He recently met two of his former guards by chance whilst visiting Japan, and now writes regularly to one of them.

He said: "They both wept when we talked about our shared experiences.

"Their regret has helped me lose the bitterness that was bottled up inside me."

Chatting to local school children, Chelsea pensioner Bill Moylon praised the decision to stage the party.

He said: "It's so rare to get PoWs from every theatre of war together in the same place."

These men in their 80s and 90s know there cannot be many more occasions like this, but as they belted out the words of We'll Meet Again, there was an infectious enjoyment that drew in all who witnessed it, and which should help ensure they do not remain the forgotten armies.