VILLAGERS have remembered the sons of Nether and Upper Poppleton who fell in the First World War – and a daughter who became the only British woman to serve as a combat soldier, albeit for the Serbian army.

Four local historians have researched the lives and deaths of the 22 men whose names are on two war memorials in the villages near York.

The four members of the Poppleton History Society - Julian Crabb, Prudence Bebb, Pamela Gittus and Edward Kendall - have spent two years on their investigations,which have culminated in the publication of a book, ‘Poppleton Sons of the Great War Remembered'.

They said in the book that when the names of the fallen were read out on the village green on Remembrance Sunday 2014, they had realised they knew little of the men and decided to launch their project.

Their research took them to places such as the Borthwick Institute, York Explore Library and Archive and York Minster Library and Archives, and they also spoke to the fallen’s descendants and visited numerous websites, including those of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and Imperial War Museum.

The book details the family background of each man who died and the circumstances of their deaths, including Captain Bertram Camm, ‘perhaps the most distinguished military hero from Poppleton'.

He was awarded the Military Cross for ‘conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty’ near Ypres, in 1917, when he showed ‘great coolness and ability under heavy fire of all kinds. But in 1918 he was one of many men who burned to death when a tunnel caught fire.

The book also recounts the story of two women, Annie Popplewell and Flora Sandes, the latter of whom was born in Nether Poppleton and who went to serve as a nurse on the Continent and ended up fighting with an infantry unit.

She was wounded and received Serbia’s highest honour for bravery and became a national hero, even appearing on a Serbian stamp issued in 2015, and lived until 1956.

*1,721 copies of the book have been distributed to every household in the villages, but copies can be obtained from Cardland in Allerton Drive for a £10 donation.