AS a 21-year-old in 1945 Norman Ford should have been enjoying the prime of his life.

Instead he lay crouched in the corner of a German farmhouse with bullets whistling around him and enemy grenades rattling the walls in what would be the final counter-attack of the Second World War.

Last month, the popular Rodborough resident, war veteran, intellectual, music lover and former SNJ contributor died after a full life at the age of 81.

Being a prolific writer of letters, articles, poetry and short stories - some of which were for radio - Norman's legacy will live on.

In one of a series of articles for the SNJ recalling his harrowing wartime experiences, Norman wrote a letter to a young soldier he killed just hours before the Germans surrendered.

Earlier he had described the heart-stopping moment he pulled the trigger.

"In the pale light of early day I had a rare experience of war which is still painful to recall," he wrote.

"A lone German soldier suddenly emerged from the woods to my left, straight into my line of fire.

"He went down when I fired but I was convinced I had missed and he was adopting a firing position, with me as his direct target.

"It's not often in modern warfare that conflict gets as personal as that.

"In fact, examination of the body afterwards revealed a terminal head-wound.

"He was 17, a very new recruit who had only minimal training and carried a brand-new rifle, its woodwork unstained and unpolished.

"He suddenly became a fellow human being."

Norman served in WW2 from 1944, and saw action in the perilous Normandy Landings.

After his national service in the Devon Regiment, he left his native Southampton for university before securing a job as an English teacher at the Boys' Technical School and Marling School in Stroud.

He had a passion for music - especially the accordion - and always enjoyed entertaining people of all ages with his playing.

As a teenager he even played in a band alongside drummer and global star in waiting Benny Hill.

And in later years Norman, a foster father-of-two, delighted in holding music workshops for pupils at Minchinhampton's Stuart House and giving jaunty accordion performances at care homes around the area.

"He was just an entertainer really and always wore his fancy hat and a dicky-bow," said his son, Tony Baker, 51.

"He loved playing for old and young and would perform anywhere people needed cheering people up.

"He was a local celebrity in his own way."

After years as a Labour party member and active CND campaigner, Norman kept his intellect sharp through attending debating groups held by the University of the Third Age - an educational society for the over 50s.

Having lost his wife Muriel in the late 1990s, he was forced to hang up his beloved accordion after developing Parkinson's Disease.

A close friend, Elizabeth Baker, said: "He was always very kind and compassionate.

"He was an excellent teacher, a very clever man and a deep thinker who will be sorely missed."

Letter to the man I killed

Dear Ludwig,

YOU don't mind my calling you Ludwig, do you?

You see, though I learned a lot about you in a short time, I just don't recall the name on your paybook.

But you looked handsome, even with that mortal gash in your skull, and I can't somehow see you as an Adolf or a Hermann.

It was a long time ago and we actually met only for a few seconds but I had the advantage of satisfying my interest in you after you died and I remember some details vividly.

For example, you were 17 and had not been in the army long.

Your uniform, though ill-fitting, was spanking new and your rifle must have left the factory unfinished, with its butt of new, unstained wood.

That marked you down as a rookie more than your boyish looks and the age on your papers.

No you didn't know me, Ludwig, though you may have seen me briefly through the sights of that brand new unfinished rifle.

So, why am I writing to you now, 54 years later?

Well, I was watching this documentary the other evening about the early days of Nazism in a clean little Bavarian town.

It was a sort of fun day and smartly uniformed young cadets were hanging out Nazi flags, watched by proud smiling mums. You could well have been one of those keen youngsters.

But at 17 you should not have been engaged in real war.

Was your mum proud of you, Ludwig, when you donned that uniform?

Or was the futility of it all and the boasting about how many Germans we had 'got' in the fierce battle which ended in disaster for you and your comrades.

The war quickly ended, we won, and I was soon parading triumphantly through the ruins of Berlin.

Granted an early release I was home by Christmas, the night-long counter-attack on Vahrendorf forgotten along with other horrors or war ... or so I thought untill I watched that documentary half a century on.

Just think, twice within one century Ludwig, boys like us were not only licensed but actually encouraged, to kill one another to solve the world's problems.

Of course, we've learned our lesson, Ludwig. Couldn't happen today. Could it? Could it?

Just an ordinary private, Devon Regt.