I’m not sure if it’s an age ‘thing’ but when I hit 50 (ish) I suddenly wanted to know about my descendants on both sides, in particular my Great-Uncles who died in the First World War. I sought help from the war historian Jeremy Banning who researched all war archives on Great-Uncle Ralph.

Jeremey helpfully compiled all the records into a single account. To read Ralph’s war diary please click HERE. He was injured in the Somme, returned home to recover then went out to Passchendaele and died on 27 August 1917 at the age of just 24… unbelievable… how do you start to imagine what he went through? This weighed on me so the only way I could help close the circle would be to set a war poem to music. The first I did was ‘In Flanders Fields’ which I had set a very simple version in 1994 for my school’s Remembrance service. I dug that out and expanded it to SATB. Please click on the pictures below to find out more - thank you.

The red circle above is where Ralph was shot by a tank going over the top