For most of his life, Leslie Heath was told his father was never found. Now, after a BBC North West appeal, he has learned Sgt Leslie Heath was buried in Venray in the Netherlands after he died there in February 1945.

Sgt Heath was 30 when he died while fighting to liberate the country. His son, Leslie, was one year old at the time.

Leslie was put in touch with Rob Vdhoven, of the Venray War Cemetery Foundation, after volunteers earlier this year asked for help to trace families of the north-west of England soldiers buried there.

“I’ve learned more about my father in the last eight weeks than I’ve known most of my life,” Leslie said.

“I was always brought up with the belief that my father was never found and my mother died believing that,” he said.

“He was the love of my mother’s life, I know that. She never remarried.”

Volunteers at the cemetery asked for photographs to place by the graves at Venray to “tell the story behind the headstone”.

“They don’t just adopt the grave, they’re like detectives,” Leslie said.

“They actually found out my father was one of the last men buried because most people there were buried in 1945 but my dad was in a temporary grave that they didn’t find until 1947.”

Rob, who tends Sgt Heath’s grave once a month, said remembering the men buried there mattered.

“Someone has to care about it,” he said.

“Because of the man who’s laying at the cemetery we can walk freely in the Netherlands and that’s a thing that we can never forget.”

Leslie said the volunteers’ work was “absolutely amazing”.

“It gives you a hell of a lot of comfort,” he said.

“That they actually put photographs on the grave of every soldier to make it more human.

“It’s not a piece of concrete that’s there. It’s a man.”

Leslie’s daughter, Michelle, who helped arrange Rob’s visit to Liverpool to meet her father, said the family wanted to thank him in person for what he had done for her grandad’s grave.

She said her father gave Rob one of Sgt Heath’s war medals as a thank you gift.

After meeting him, Leslie said: “We connected immediately, and I felt like I had known him for ages.

“It was a strange feeling, but it was a nice feeling, you know? A really nice feeling.”

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