AN army medical officer who treated prisoners at a German concentration camp has been honoured in the Sussex village he called home.

A plaque has been unveiled in memory of Major General James Johnston on Northiam’s village green during a ceremony attended by about 60 people including members of his family.

Maj Gen James Johnston was faced with 40,000 prisoners at the Bergen-Belsen camp following its liberation in 1945 and set up a hospital to treat them for typhus, TB and starvation.

The Scottish-born medic was commanding a mobile medical unit close to the German-Dutch border in April 1945 when was ordered to move his unit to take charge of the sick and starving at the camp.

He moved to the East Sussex village near Rye with his family in 1973.

An account in which Gen Johnston describes the task of trying to care for so many sick and dying as “greatest test of my career” and a situation that would “remain engraved on my memory for the rest of my days” is now in the Holocaust Museum in Washington.