A SOLDIER who devoted his spare time to helping people in Bosnia today spoke about the work which earned him an MBE.

Staff Sergeant Alan Brown turned his peacekeeping role into a mercy mission helping local refugees in the war-torn country.

Alan, from Darwen, spent every spare moment he had during last four years in the war zone building new children's play areas and renovating places for refugees to stay in.

His efforts close to the Croatian border, along with colleagues from the Royal Logistics Corp, have earned him the MBE.

Although the majority of honours are announced to coincide with the Queen's Birthday and New Year, Alan's award is one of a number handed out through the year for operational work.

Alan said: "There have been quite a few different projects we have done to help them.

"They were very wary of us and it took a long time for them to accept us, but we just worked around them. If they saw someone in uniform, they thought you were going to come and shoot them."

He said one major project was to renovate an old school building, where a group of Bosnian refugees had been housed. The building had no windows or facilities, until Alan and his 12-strong group of volunteers moved in to renovate the place.

It took them six months of working in their spare time to put in new windows, redecorate and concrete the floors.

But their efforts didn't end there, as the group saw to it that there was a happy ending for the refugees themselves. "We managed to get those refugees repatriated to Bosnia, which is where they were originally from," he said.

They also built a children's play area from scratch and renovated an old minibus for local children.

"We didn't get a lot of spare time, but we had to go and ask to volunteer for things. We tried to fit in as much as we could."

Alan, who is normally based in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, spent six months at a time in the country.

He will be travelling to Buckingham Palace to collect his MBE on Friday, with wife Selina and children Matthew, 12, and Tori, eight.

News of the award was a bolt from the blue for him.

He said: "I remember my boss saying he might put me in for an award, ages ago, after we built the children's play area, but I didn't think he would.

"Then I got the letter saying I'd got the MBE and I realised he must have done it. It was quite a shock."