FIFTY five years after his execution at notorious concentration camp Sachsenhausen the name of a Sedbergh soldier is to be commemorated.

Attached to the Special Operations Executive, Sgt Thomas Edward Handley was captured in Greece in May 1943.

A member of the Locksmith party, which was trying to blow up the Corinth Canal, the old Sedbergh School day boy was sent to Sachsenhausen and tortured by the Gestapo.

Sgt.

Handley was held in solitary confinement before his execution on April 10, 1945, and a prisoner in a nearby cell got to know of the brave soldier.

He was Bertram James, a former RAF squadron leader, who recently set out to trace any surviving members of Sgt Handley's family to tell them of the memorial plaque, dedicated to the 29 British servicemen shot at Sachsenhausen.

Henry Handley saw a notice in The Westmorland Gazette appealing for information about his brother and got in touch with Military Cross holder and retired diplomat Mr James.

"I am so pleased Thomas's name will be remembered," said the 82-year-old, who now lives in Kendal.

He and his two brothers were all sergeants in the Second World War and hopes were initially high that Thomas would be returned to his family, which had roots in Sedbergh going back to the 1400s.

Letters sent to his parents from the War Office and Royal Corps of Signals are still held in a precious parcel.

They starkly state former librarian Thomas was a prisoner-of-war, and later say he had to be presumed dead.

"We were never really told anything.

I didn't even know about the Corinth Canal connection until now," Mr Handley told the Gazette.

His wheelwright and undertaker father Frank never got over his eldest son's death and Mr Handley said the shooting of his favourite brother, a Military Medal holder, aged 31, had affected him throughout his life.

Thanking the Royal British Legion in Berlin for financing the plaque, Mr James explained it was likely to be unveiled next spring in Sachsenhausen, now a memorial site.

Mr James had taken part in the great escape from Sagan prison in Silesia, immortalised in the film starring Steve McQueen.

Captured near the Czech border, he was sent to Sachsenhausen, where 100,000 perished between 1936 and 1945.

After getting out of a high security compound and fleeing 100 miles before recapture, Mr James's execution was ordered by Himmler.

It was later commuted to indefinite solitary confinement, in one of the concentration camp's 80 dreaded cells, where Sgt.

Handley was held.

The Ludlow war hero recalled his exploits in the book Moonlight Night and was determined Sachsenhausen's British service victims should not be forgotten.