HUNDREDS of children's shoes left behind in the wake of the tsunami in Sri Lanka left an indelible impression on an Abergavenny man.

Peter Nuttall has just returned from three weeks in the country, where he was team leader with an international humanitarian organisation, and today he was due to brief Assembly First Minister Rhodri Morgan on the situation.

He said: "The most harrowing thing is the number of children who died. All the beaches were strewn with rubbish and I kept stepping on tiny children's shoes which had been washed up.

"That was most upsetting. This was the most harrowing situation I've been in, even worse than Darfur in the Sudan. It left an indelible impression on me."

Since he retired as a lieutenant colonel with the Territorial Army in 2001, Peter, who lives with his wife Rosemary in the Rholben area of Abergavenny, spent a couple of years as the commandant of Gwent Army Cadet Force, achieving the rank of Colonel.

But during that time he has flown to many parts of the world to carry out rapid response emergency humanitarian work, including in Kosovo, Macedonia, Croatia, Iraq, Liberia, Uganda, the Sudan and India.

This started after he spent just over a year with the Regular Army in Bosnia between December 1995 and 1997, working for the NATO national force.

He was contacted by the GOAL humanitarian organisation on December 29 to ask if he would act as a team leader in Sri Lanka after the tsunami, and flew out the following day.