A RETIRED minister turned author has recounted the sacrifices made by his five uncles on land and in the air during the battles of the Great War.

Hugh Neems, 86, of Todmorden, grew up hearing the tales of how both his maternal and paternal relatives served at the Somme, Ypres and Gallipoli.

And in the centenary year of the start of the First World War, the former Royal Navy engineer has revisited their exploits for a new book, A Rough Ride.

He tells how one uncle David Lloyd, known as Dai, volunteered for military service in 1916, when he was 19, and was first appointed to the Royal Army Medical Corps.

His army record shows that he was transferred to the 18th Battalion London Irish Rifles, as part of the 47th London Division – already battle hardened at Vimy Ridge and 2,500 men under strength, after suffering heavy losses.

He was wounded in action there, among the derelict mining tunnels, on October 9 and returned to England by hospital ship.

Later accepted to No 13 Officer Cadet Battalion at Newmarket, he passed out as a 2nd lieutenant, described a s a ‘good sound cadet and a fair instructor’.

He died in 1926 flying with the RAF while on the Afghan border.

Dai’s brother Hugh, who was struck down three times in battle, enlisted when he was 19 and underwent explosives training as a sapper with the Royal Engineers and went out to the Western Front in 1914.

For a sapper carrying the fight to the enemy meant doing the routine, but dangerous, task of laying out telephone cables.

His daily duties included unhooking snagged wire from trees or gable ends, avoiding snipers who regarded them as sitting ducks and escaping being garrotted by stray shrapnel while laying a land line — in addition they were expected to fight to the last man on the front line.

In 1915, a Royal Engineers Signal Company had assigned to it 33 fast horses, 32 bicycles and nine motorcycles to help in getting messages through – and for three years Hugh was a dispatch rider, rising to the rank of Lieutenant.

In late 1917 he began a flying instruction course and six months later began service as a pilot in 52 squadron, Royal Flying Corps.

He took part in destructive sorties with the 4th Division and Canadian Corps as they broke through the Hindenburgh Line.

He was awarded the Military Cross for ‘bombing patrol work in the March retreat when he fulfiled his task of bombing and machine gunning the advancing enemy with conspicuous gallantry.’ During that same month, the author’s paternal uncle Arthur Neems was killed in a grenade attack on the ground at Fampoux.

Arthur Neems was initially posted to the Veterinary Corps — war at that time was horse intensive and required farmers’ boys to care for the animals.

He faced German bayonets in the trenches of Arras and was killed by grenades thrown by storm troopers attacking through trenches dug around Fampoux. on March 29 , 1918.

His name appears on the wall of Faubourg D’Amiens cemetery in Arras, which has 2,000 graves and a memorial to the 35,942 men missing from battles in the area.

Another of the writer’s uncles, his namesake Hugh Neems, served with the Australian Cavalry, bound for Gallipoli, but ear infections, suffered in Suez, led him to being discharged from active service.

The fifth uncle, from his mother’s side, Griffith Lloyd, a younger brother of Dai and Hugh, enlisted in the Royal Horse Artillery in 1917.

  • A Rough Ride, by Hugh Neems, is published by Book Guild Publishing and costs £12.99.