PERCY Lockwood-Bradley was the landlord of two well-known York pubs in the years after the First World War; first the Groves Club on Penley Rose Street, and later the Bowling Green Inn, formerly on Lowther Street.

Yet in all the years he worked at these establishments - right up until he died at the comparatively young age of 49 - not a morsel of pub grub passed his lips

His daughter Betty - now 86-year-old Betty Gray, from Bishopthorpe - remembers regular doctor's visits to her dad as being a feature of her childhood. She also recalls her mother paying the weekly fee for a Dr Cameron to visit their home.

There was a reason for all that, she says.

During the war, her father saw action with the West Yorkshire Regiment - including at the Somme.

He didn’t returned entirely unscathed.

A yellow haze often hung heavy in the air at the Somme, the fetid tinge of mustard seeping towards the Allied trenches containing the troops of Percy's regiment.

He was one of those unlucky enough to be exposed to the gas.

It didn't kill him- but it did strip away the lining of his stomach.

For the rest of his life, he survived almost exclusively on a diet of eggs and milk - the only thing he could keep down.

Following the gas attack, Percy was transferred to a “hospital ship” at Pontefract, where he recovered from his injuries.

Amidst a room awash with the humdrum “hospital blues” of his fellow patients, Percy passed his time making a cardboard picture frame spun with a profusion of multicoloured threads.

Years later, that very frame was used to hold the photograph of his eldest daughter; an ornament that still rests on Betty’s mantelpiece today.

Despite leading a moderately normal working life after the war, it was Percy’s wife - Betty’s mother, Gertrude Emily Taylor - who served as “the family’s mainstay.”

Sustaining the needs and wants of four children as well as attending to the state of her husband’s health became Gertrude’s sole occupation, as well as helping to run the family business.

Percy had a stroke shortly before his death, which doctors at the time believed to be linked to the earlier gas attack. He died when Betty was just 14 years old.

It was only last November that the memories of her father’s experiences came flooding back, when Betty moved to Bishopthorpe. In the mass clear-out that ensued, she stumbled upon something entirely unexpected entangled in a mass of other items inside an old tin.

The dull bronze of a medal once belonging to her father gazed up at her.

Betty was as puzzled by the find as she was by the obscure French writing engraved on the face of the medal.

It is a mystery that also intrigued us here at Yesterday Once More.

Using the French engravings as a starting point, we found that one side of the medal depicted Saint Barbara, an early Christian martyr and the Patron Saint of Artillerymen, with the caption “Saint Barbara: with her you will win.”

The reverse featured an illustration of a small cannon, accompanied by an inscription in French. “Patronne Pour Le Salut de L’humanité defendez la France et ses Allies de 1914-15-16”, it said. That, we believe, translates as an invocation to Barbara as “patron saint, for the salvation of humanity, (to) defend France and its Allies of 1914-15-16”. These are the very years of the Battle for the Somme.

So the medal seems almost to have been some sort of talisman: one perhaps carried into battle by troops.

Our initial research suggests the medal came into being as an Art Medal, which typically depicts notable persons or historical events. But we'd love to know more. So if any readers out there know the origin of this medal, and how it could have come to be in the possession of a York man who fought at the Somme, we'd be delighted to hear from you.

* Throughout the year we will be looking back at the events of the First World War. If you have a story you would like to share – about fathers or grandfathers, uncles or great uncles who fought in the war, or about the women who suffered at home while their menfolk were away - we would love to hear from you.

Phone Stephen Lewis on 01904 567263 or email stephen.lewis@thepress.co.uk