THE missing years of Chris Howes were marked by a complete lack of hard information on his whereabouts.

His anxious parents Roy, 70, and Betty, 71, could only clutch at rumour and counter-rumour as evidence of some activity in the dense jungle of Northern Cambodia where he was thought to be hidden by his Khmer Rouge captors.

These uncertain sources served only to fuel media speculation and to spark brief flurries of renewed diplomatic effort.

The Howes patiently waited at their home in a quiet cul-de-sac at the village of Backwell, near Bristol. They experienced the whole gamut of emotions from the depths of despair to the heights of hope: sometimes fearing their unmarried son was dead; sometimes buoyed by elation that he might be alive.

They and his older sister Patricia - a JP and local authority worker in Wakefield, west Yorkshire - eventually disciplined themselves to a grim waiting game, refusing to believe the best or the worst of his unknown predicament.

The family waited for news from the Foreign Office in London and the British Embassy staff in Phnom Penh. They also had the support of their constituency MP, Dr Liam Fox, a former Foreign Office minister.

The family were also comforted by their knowledge of the calm courage of their 36-year-old former soldier son.

Early reports said his courage surfaced at the moment of his capture on March 26, 1996. He and his 30-strong team of mine clearers were surrounded by guerrillas armed with rocket launchers and machine guns.

They were apparently seeking ransom. They let everyone leave after Mr Howes volunteered to stay behind with his Cambodian interpreter Houn Hourth.

He and his team had been working for only two weeks in the Siam Reap province, near the fabled temples of Angkor Wot - the country's premier tourist attraction. And they were close to the infamous killing fields of the mid-70s under the Pol Pot regime.

From an early age Mr Howes had wanted to be a soldier. Shortly after leaving the local comprehensive school at Nailsea, he joined up at 17. He was to serve seven years as a Royal Engineer, seeing service as a private in the Falklands conflict.

His return to civvy street saw him briefly working in West Country quarries before moving to Kuwait for mine clearance work in the wake of the Gulf War. Then followed two years in Northern Iraq with the British charity Mines Advisory group before moving to Cambodia. He then joined one of five teams tackling minefields with an estimated six to ten million mines.

Amid a number of rumours about his fate, one said he was reported in November 1996 to have fled - across the killing fields with a 150-strong breakaway group of Khmer Rouge guerrillas pursued by a ''loyal'' group of guerrillas.

Further agency reports quoted top Cambodian Army officers saying he escaped in ill-health, still bearing a manacle around one wrist. It was said to be his mark as a ''slave'' making mines for his captors.

However, none of the reports ever came to fruition.