Interviews with a late war veteran may be lost after a burglar raided the home of oral historian David O’Shea Meyer.

Mr Meyer, who has spent years interviewing veterans about their experiences, said someone stole iPads and an iPod from his home last Wednesday, including an iPod he had been using as back-up storage for his interviews.

“I took my wife to the dentist at around 9.30am, and afterwards she asked if I would go to the Ash Wednesday service,” he said. “I thought that it had been a while so I went.

“We got back at around 3pm and went to sit down and do some work. I went to get some information from my iPad and I couldn’t find it. I thought I would look around for it later, but then I realised my wife’s iPad was missing too.”

Mr Meyer said he reported the burglary to the police that day, but discovered days later that the iPod, which he had used to record several interviews, was also missing.

He said he has copies of most of his interviews on other devices, but there were several conversations that he had not yet copied. Among those feared lost are conversations with army Captain Fred Clipper, who died late last year at the age of 104.Captain Clipper was deployed to Bermuda in 1942 as part of the US Army’s efforts to protect the island and shipping supply convoys from submarines. He later met and married Bermudian Rosemary Champness.

While Mr Meyer said he had copied several of the conversations, including a “through line” of Captain Clipper’s experiences during the Second World War, several later conversations had not been copied from the stolen iPod.

“What I lost is what I hadn’t got around to backing up yet,” he said.

“I think I have enough, but every time I talked to him he would make me laugh.

“At 104 he would still play jokes on me.”