A BLACKPOOL police dog handler is travelling 10,000 miles on the scent of a dead soldier.

Sergeant Mick Swindells flies to the Falkland Islands in January to try to find the body of Marine Alan Addis of Hull who disappeared, believed murdered, in 1980, two years before the Falklands conflict.

Sgt Swindells, who lives in Norbreck, is training police dog Brook, a two-year-old border collie, to sniff out dead bodies both buried or underwater.

The dog will be flown out with him and will remain there when Sgt Swindells returns.

Sgt Swindells said: "Marine Addis was only 19 when he disappeared.

"His job was to train the local militia in the use of firearms and defence tactics.

"All we know is that he went to a social club on a Friday night with some of his colleagues and was last seen leaving the club at about 11.30pm."

In 1995 officers from Devon and Cornwall Constabulary - the Falklands' sister force - arrested three people, but no charges were ever brought for lack of evidence.

Sgt Swindells, a member of the Forensic Search Advisory Group which includes scientists as well as police, went out to the Falklands last January to reconnoitre.

This time he will be accompanied not only by Brook but by radar technician John Hunter, from Birmingham University, who will use his skills to try to trace the body.

And a TV film team is also interested in following their search.

"I have been in touch with Marine Addis's mother Anne, who now lives in California," said Sgt Swindells.

"She's kept up the pressure all these years, so that she can finally lay her son to rest."

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