Family man who did not live to see Christmas

"He was talking about 'going to Nance,'" said his granddaughter Mrs Isobel Cox, who made a pilgrimage to Bridgnorth war memorial on the centenary of the death of Private Bowen, who was killed in action on December 6, 1917.

"It was said that he had shrapnel in the spine and died four hours later. I thought it would be nice to go to the war memorial.

"I bought a posy of red poppies and a chap who does the gardens helped and we tied it loosely to a tree which had been planted in 2014 to commemorate the beginning of World War One.

"I thought I might be in floods of tears, but I found it quite nice."

Mrs Cox, from Wellington, has researched her maternal grandfather's life and death as part of her family history.

"My mother was Mrs Brenda Smith. She couldn't remember him as she was only three when he died. All she could remember was her mother and two brothers sitting at the table crying. Her middle brother didn't remember him either, and he was seven.

"Alas, his military records had been destroyed in a fire in the early 1940s so we have little information on him. So we do not know whether he was a war hero or not, but he was a very nice man, a family man, loved by all - 'the best husband I could have wished for,' Nance had stated."

Archibald Edward Bowen was born in 1881 at 21 Friars Street, Bridgnorth, and became a compositor in the printing trade. He went to work in Guildford, and met Nance - her first name was actually Annie - who was a bookbinder from Woking, and they wed in 1908.

They moved to Oxford as he had become a monotype operator with Oxford University Press, and had three children.

He enlisted in the Ox & Bucks Light Infantry in March 1917, but was not to live to see that Christmas, being killed in the fighting around Cambrai. He is buried at the Rocquigny-Equancourt Road cemetery where a sweet alyssum grows next to his headstone.

Sadly, Nance died 10 years later, leaving Isobel's 13-year-old mother and the other children as orphans.