A PLAQUE honouring six soldiers who drowned while on a training exercise on Windermere in 1945 has been unveiled at the town’s war memorial.

The men were identified by The Westmorland Gazette last year following an appeal from reader Don Lowis.

Following Mr Lowis’s appeal the soldiers’ names were read out at the Windermere cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday.

And now Windermere Branch of the Royal British Legion have installed a plaque on a bench at the memorial.

Mr Lows said: “I thought these young men deserved to be remembered, and this is above and beyond what I had hoped for.”

The men, aged between 18 and 21, died after a sudden squall caused waves to swamp and sink their collapsible assault boat.

The exercise took place in July 1945, after V.E. Day, but while Britain was still at war with Japan.

The drownings were reported in the Gazette on July 28 1945, which recounted: “The men drowned were 2/Lt. Rodney Nigel Holt, 20, Romsey, Hants.; and Riflemen Jack William Weir, 19, Culloden, Inverness, Reginald Ernest Taylor, 19, Stratforn-on-Avon, Harry Cohen Richard, 19, Upper Holloway, Henry Frank Thorp, 18, Hammersmith and Ronald William Digby, 21, Willesden.”