AT THIS time of year I like to tell a story, so allow me to dip into my memory box and pay homage to the man who taught me my craft - and also happened to be the most unforgettable reporter I ever met.

He was Jack Smyth, a softly spoken Irishman with such a nose for news he found it difficult to cross the road without falling over a front-page story.

We met in 1944. I was a 14-year-old messenger and Jack a frontline war correspondent.

Five of Jack's fellow war correspondents at Reuters news agency were killed in the Second World War.

War reporters have the toughest job of any in our profession, constantly running the risk of death by bomb, shell or bullet.

All were heroes to us messengers. With his red hair, easy charm and obvious bravado, Jack was our favourite.

In September 1944, after secret training as a paratrooper, he dropped with British airborne forces in the abortive Arnhem landings. In the thick of battle, Jack filed the only dispatches from the frontline.

"On this fifth day our force is still being heavily mortared, sniped, machine-gunned and shelled," he wrote.

"When the Second Army arrives and relieves this crowd, then may be told one of the epics of the war. In the meantime, they go on fighting their hearts out."

Sadly, the Second Army never made it in time. Most of the airborne force was wiped out. Jack finished among the injured and captured.

For 17 days he was tortured under Gestapo interrogation.

Time and again they threatened him with death, refusing to understand what a supposedly neutral Irishman was doing in a paratrooper's uniform.

It was nine months before the war ended and Jack came back to tell some of us the full story.

"Jaysus, they beat the s*** out of me," he said. "There was I, in British Army officer's uniform, telling 'em I was a neutral and demanding to see the nearest Irish ambassador. Well, they were having none of that."

Still carrying his scars and just out of captivity, Jack volunteered to go the Far East to see out the war against the Japanese. It wasn't long before he was giving the world first news of the atom bomb on Hiroshima.

With the war over, Jack came back to work in the London newsroom. By then Reuters had made me a junior reporter and Jack took it upon himself to teach me the business of reporting.

Eventually he went back home to his beloved Dublin, where once again he lived up to his reputation by finding the kidnapped child of a wealthy businessman.

Sad to say, fate had other plans. On a stormy night just before Christmas in 1956, his car ran into the River Liffey, drowning himself and his wife.

Jack Smyth. A true journalist. My dear friend. Best man at my first wedding. I miss him still.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.