Fateful minutes which turned a young Salopian into a war hero

Not that it was something he would readily speak of, let alone boast about.

But on the anniversary of the exploits of Lieutenant Bright and the men of the 4th Battalion of the King's Shropshire Light Infantry under his command, his relatives are returning to that hill at Bligny near Rheims in France where they achieved enduring glory.

On June 6, 1918, Lieutenant Bright found himself as a most junior officer leading the depleted battalion in a charge in the face of a hail of machinegun fire and shrapnel to take the crest.

The battle was in the French sector and the admiring French awarded the entire battalion - a Territorial battalion made up of soldiers typically with peacetime jobs - the Croix de Guerre avec Palme, the highest unit honour.

And Bright, who was later promoted Captain, was one of three of the Shropshire regiment soldiers who received the medal individually.

"I've got it, with all his medals, framed on the wall. I'm looking at them now," said his last surviving daughter, 82-year-old Mrs Caroline Adams, who lives in Bedfordshire.

She and other descendants are travelling to France for the anniversary commemoration at Bligny Hill, where on June 6 French villagers and local dignitaries along with members of the regimental officers association will gather, and her son Mark, himself a retired Army officer, will give an address.

The battle has been commemorated annually on the anniversary with a Bligny Day service at St Chad's Church, Shrewsbury, and this centenary year there are additional events at Shrewsbury on Saturday, June 9. There will be a service at St Chad's at 11.30am, followed at 1pm by a reception and lunch at the Shropshire Regimental Museum at Shrewsbury Castle, and at 3pm there will be a band and bugles concert in the castle grounds.

"I was always very proud of him," said Mrs Adams.

"My father was always very modest about the war. That generation never spoke about it. We never really learned anything, just little anecdotes, that was all."

Mark, who is 54 and lives near Milton Keynes, was in the Army for 18 years, reaching the rank of Major.

"My grandfather died when I was 16. I have this memory of quite a stern, stiff upper lip, reserved gentleman, who was kind. He knew I was going to join the Army - I think I had just been accepted into the Light Infantry, a successor regiment to the KSLI.

"He would never discuss his wartime experiences with me, nor with his family. Mum said he would have nightmares - that's what her mother told her.

"I'm extremely proud of him, and have immense pride in what he and his men achieved that day and during their service on the Western Front. He was a man of many talents. He was a soldier, writer, and businessman. He was of a generation which was incredibly stoic."

One of the very few wartime stories his grandfather did tell him was of an occasion when he was so exhausted that he slept under a makeshift table for 24 hours.

During Mark's service he was part of the British stabilisation force in Sierra Leone, and in a poignant connection with his grandfather's service he visited a cemetery in Freetown Harbour in which there were the graves of 4th Battalion KSLI soldiers who had died during the battalion's the long trip back to Britain in 1917 after nearly three years in the Far East.

"They had died of fever on board ship," said Mark.

So what was the background of this Shropshire man who became a hero?

Mark said: "He was born in 1895 at Ludlow and his father was a quarry manager at Clee Hill Quarry. Schooling I understand was at Ludlow Grammar School where he met his childhood sweetheart, Kathleen Sanders."

Mrs Adams said her father had been a student at Harper Adams Agricultural College near Newport before the war and had then volunteered for the Army with his mates, but after the war initially struggled to find work - the students were not allowed to go back to finish their courses.

He was, she says, always known as Geoff.

He married Kathleen at Ludlow in 1923. Her family farmed at Steventon, just outside the town.

They lived at the village of Luston in Herefordshire and he forged a career as an auctioneer, after a while joining the firm of Edwards, Russell & Baldwin, which was to become Russell, Baldwin & Bright.

He became a renowned antiques expert.

He also was interested in broadcasting, doing a radio programme for the BBC called Sunday Out, visiting stately homes. During the war he broadcast with the American forces network in a programme called "So Long, Yank."

"He used to entertain a lot of Americans during the war at Luston."

Mark says that in the 1930s his grandfather wrote a play about his experiences in the Great War, called Memories.

Too old to serve in the Second World War, he joined the Special Constabulary in Leominster, becoming Superintendent, and Mrs Adams recalls a murder in the strictly racially segregated American Army.

"On a Saturday afternoons the black Americans were allowed to go to Leominster cinema, and the whites went in the evening. On the changeover in the afternoon there was a horrible murder when a white soldier killed a black soldier. Father got involved in that because it was on civilian premises. I never heard what happened."

Geoff Bright also had a literary side.

"He wrote 'Hereford is Heaven,' a book of poems about Herefordshire and the Welsh border, and also 'West of the Malverns,' prosey bits about characters who lived in the countryside. I remember him saying to anybody 'you never want to go east of the Malverns, it's horrible over there.'

"He also used to write regular articles for the Herefordshire Times about the countryside."

Geoff Bright, who played cricket for Shropshire Gentlemen, had three daughters.

He was a regular attender at the annual Bligny Day service and lived on retirement at Kingsland, near Leominster.

He died in hospital at Leominster in September 1980, aged 85.