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My father must have been one of a tiny number of people who fought right through both world wars - and came out to tell the tale.

When he was in North Africa one of his engineers made him a chess set, one set of pieces being made from aluminium from a shot down German fighter, the other set from steel from a burned out German tank.

The pieces are not specially sophisticated, but show the ingenuity of the human race and how we can improvise in very difficult circumstances.