A former prisoner of war will travel to his native Singapore in a Heroes Return visit next month.

Alfred Peterson was just 16 when he lied about his age to join the allied forces fighting the Japanese invasion of his homeland.

Along with his 15-year-old brother William, the pair joined the Royal Medical Corps. They were taken prisoner by the Japanese at the fall of Singapore in 1942 and somehow survived a three-year ordeal at the hands of their captors.

Now 60 years on, the 80-year-old grandfather, of Scholes, Cleckheaton, is to make what could be a final return trip to the Kranji cemetery where fallen British and Australian Prisoners of War were laid to rest.

Mr Peterson was one of thousands of prisoners left half-starved on basic rations of rice and forced to build the Thai-Burma railway.

"As a prisoner of war you are always hungry even after a meal," he said. "We marched by night and worked by day.

"We were promised two nights' marches and then a day off. Then it became four nights straight, then five nights. It was more of a crawl than a walk and we had very little food.

"After eight months, the railway was complete and we returned to Singapore. They decided to move the hospital to Kranji and sent some of us there to clear up the new camp.

"We found around 100 cats at that site and three weeks later there wasn't a cat left. I tell you, if you cook chicken and cook a cat, you can't tell the difference.

"Three months later, my brother William came to this new camp as a patient. He had caught beri-beri, caused by vitamin B deficiency, and he couldn't lift his foot up. Some of the fellows made a copy of the store room keys from an impression I made of the keys in a cake of soap. That's how I got extra food to my brother."

The pair were both awarded the British Empire Medal for their work with fellow prisoners in a cholera camp.

After the war Mr Peterson followed a fellow POW, Briton Ronnie Hant, to Bradford and later settled in the city with his second wife Jackie, now 62.

His brother died 20 years ago.

Mr and Mrs Peterson, who live at Scholes Lane, have welcomed the opportunity to visit Singapore and pay their respects. The trip is part of the Big Lottery Fund's Heroes Return programme for World War Two veterans and they will spend just over two weeks in the former colony.