Canadian's war-time diary found in Germany

LOS ANGELES, June 2 (UPI) -- A diary secretly kept by a Canadian prisoner of war at the end of World War II in Germany, has been returned to the man some 60 years after he was freed.

Bill Ferguson, now 93, traveled to Germany in April to collect the worn journal he hid in a barn just before U.S. soldiers freed him from captivity in 1945, the Los Angeles Daily News reported Thursday.

Ferguson said he kept the diary -- a book with a red maple leaf on the cover the Toronto YMCA sent to Canadian soldiers -- to hold a picture of his wife and write notes about what happened in the prison camp. He had been captured at Dieppe, France in 1942 and when Allied troops arrived at Wildetaube, Germany, forgot about the book stashed a barn rafter.

Some 60 years later, Briton John Bennett had a chance meeting with some Germans who said they'd found a journal and wanted help finding the owner. Bennett traveled to Germany to see the book, found a letter inside and was able to trace Ferguson to his home in California.

Ferguson and his family went to Germany in April, where they were given the book during a celebration in Wildetaube.