A pensioner who fought alongside Robert Maxwell has defended his honour after the tycoon was accused of shooting an unarmed civilian at the end of the Second World War.

Detectives were preparing to interview Mr Maxwell just before his death about an allegation that he killed the mayor of a German town in 1945 when he was a captain in the British Army.

The alleged shooting, on April 2, 1945, was first disclosed by the controversial publishing magnate's authorised biographer, Joe Haines, in 1988.

But two officers from the Metropolitan Police forces historic war crimes unit were unable to find any witnesses, and the case was closed, it emerged last week.

Ronald Dale, 80, of Thorney Leys, Witney, fought alongside Maxwell in Holland and Germany in the Queen's Royal Regiment in 1944 and 1945, and said he had not witnessed the alleged shooting.

He said: "I was in Maxwell's platoon and I was with him nearly every day -- I think we would have known about it.

"I don't think people should knock Maxwell now that he's dead -- he's not here to defend himself.

"He was a great guy -- everybody liked him -- and he was good in a combat situation.

"He was a good shot and he was the bravest man I have ever met. He was a credit to the British Army."

Mr Dale said he fought with Mr Maxwell in Holland and Germany between September 1944 and the end of the war in May 1945.

When asked if he had ever seen Mr Maxwell kill a man in combat, Mr Dale said: "I don't want to answer that. He hated the Germans' guts and he was very brave when it came to saving his fellow troops."

Mr Maxwell, who lived at Headington Hill Hall, Oxford, died in mysterious circumstances in November 1991 after a fall from his yacht in the Atlantic Ocean.

Last week, Terry Pattinson, 63, a former Daily Mirror industrial editor, said Mr Maxwell told him about the shooting when the publisher owned the national newspaper.

Mr Pattinson, who features the incident in a play he has written about Maxwell, said: "I was talking to Maxwell in his office, and he admitted to me that he had shot the mayor of a German town in the last months of the war, after six of his men were killed."

Mr Pattinson also hinted in his play that Mr Maxwell had bribed the referee of Oxford United's crucial Division One game against Arsenal on May 5, 1986, which the U's won 3-0.

But Southend-based referee Dave Axcell denied that this was the case.