Crops sway where "the Shropshires" died

He wanted to see the lie of the land and fulfil sort of promise he had made to Sam by retracing his footsteps.

Passchendaele, a grim campaign which ran from July 31 to November 6, 1917, has become synonymous with the horror of the Great War, with massive slaughter for little gain fought amid a sea of mud which would swallow up the wounded, never to be seen again.

What John found was a landscape of farmers' fields with golden crops, grazing cattle, small hamlets - and immaculate cemeteries.

"My grandfather meant a lot to me," said John, who lives in Blacksburg, Virginia, USA, having moved there with his wife in 1979.

"I lived with him and was brought up by him from the age of about one until 1958, when I was15. I then saw him regularly until his death in September, 1961. Understandably he didn't go into great detail with a youngster about his life experiences, but there were glimpses which eventually prompted me to find out where he was during World War One.

"In recent years I found myself 'telling him' that I would trace his path through the war. In 2009, my wife was lecturing in Brussels, Belgium, and we drove to Passchendaele to see if we could find the battlefield. One of the other lecturers was from Ghent, and he said we wouldn't find it because the land had all been returned to farmland. But we went anyway."

The 4th Battalion of the King's Shropshire Light Infantry had arrived at Passchendaele in October 1917. Sam Payne, whose home was at 1 Abbey Villas, Malinslee, was a Private in Company D.

"Just west of the village of Dark Lane, near Dawley, was the small community of Malinslee, where my grandfather grew up at Abbey Villas. Stand at the entrance to Debenham's department store in Telford shopping centre and look down - that's where Abbey Villas were.

"My grandfather walked through the fields to school in Shifnal."

Sam - James Samuel Payne - and the rest of the battalion of Territorial soldiers had been serving in the Far East but were brought back to Europe in July 1917 and immediately sent to France and Belgium with no leave, despite being away from their homes for years, and being still in their tropical kit.

John has researched the detailed movements of "the Shropshires" and says they moved to the rain-sodden front line at Passchendaele on October 29.

"The battlefield encountered by the KSLI on October 30 stretched from Varlet Farm to Haringstraat, a farm road to the west of the slight ridge extending north of Passchendaele to the village of Westrozebeke.

"The left flank and northern boundary of the battlefield was Lekkerbotekreek, a stream which ran down from its marshy source just west of Haringstraat. To the south, on the right flank, were the Canadians, directly attacking the town of Passchendaele to their east."

Mercifully, the battalion were not long in the front line in this vision of hell.

"While the world was hearing about the horror and slaughter of the Passchendaele battle, the KSLI was recovering and navvying for the Canadian Railway Corps between St. Julien and Langemarck, just behind the battlefield and within range of the shelling. It then moved on November 23 by bus to Eringhem and thence by route march to Houtkerque on the 28th for further company training."

Thereafter the battalion moved to another sector and Sam and his unit were taken prisoner at Messines on April 11, 1918. For him, the war was over, but the suffering was not.

"They were detained in the prison camp in Stendal, Germany, some 60 or so miles west of Berlin. There followed, at least for the enlisted men, seven months of starvation diet - typically a small brown loaf of bread between six, per day.

"They were emaciated and sick when released, and slowly made their way home, most through France and Calais. My grandfather walked alone through Flanders fields and was fed by the farmhouse wives on his way to repatriation through Holland. He liked the Flemish people and they probably saved his life.

"Back in England, through Hull, he received the letter of gratitude for his service from King George V. He then spent a month in a convalescent hospital in Yorkshire before returning home to Malinslee.

"After his grim saga of survival, I knew him as a calm and contented man, and he was a good golfer, too."

Their 2009 visit to the battlefield took John and his wife first to the town square in Passchendaele and then to Tyne Cot Cemetery.

"The visitor centre had about two dozen displays showing the battlefield from October, 1917, each with the pictures of 10 soldiers, British, Commonwealth and German, showing where they had been found after the battle.

"My wife is a quick reader and soon she came back and said, 'I've found a KSLI soldier!' - and there was Thomas Godwin. He was found near the start of a stream, and I commented to my wife, 'Well they won't have covered that up. Let's go and find it.'

"We went north of Passchendaele about one and a half miles, west about a third of a mile and south on a farm road, Haringstraat - and there are the source waters of Lekkerbotekreek in a cattle pasture, close to the north flank of the battlefield where Thomas Godwin had died."

John was to take a series of pictures capturing where the Shropshires had fought.

Before the war Sam had been an apprentice at the Lilleshall Company at Oakengates. After the conflict he moved away from Shropshire, and had a fish and chip shop at Birkenhead, and then at Bebington on the Wirral.

John can remember a smattering of his grandfather's anecdotes.

"When the 4th Battalion (Territorial) KSLI sailed into Hong Kong Harbour to relieve the regular units, the good swimmers on board dived into the water and swam ashore. In May, 1917, on their way back to England, he enjoyed the stay in Cape Town and appreciated the praise given to the men for their precision on the drill field.

"As a Company Runner he would sleep under a table before being nudged awake to action. As prisoners of war in Germany, the daily ration was often a small brown loaf between six - as the story goes, the man cutting the bread had the last pick.

"I don't recall any mention of his visiting Malinslee in my lifetime, but he did talk about it, along with Dark Lane, Dawley and Shifnal, with an affection that was obvious. When it came to food, I was taught to be grateful, not to leave anything, and told about his starvation diet in the prison camp."