IT’S A WONDER that Isaiah Sanders survived the First World War.

The Keighley private suffered at least eight serious injuries or illnesses on the frontlines during his time in service.

Pontefract-born Isaiah had enlisted in the Territorial Army in June 1913, aged 18, while working as a jobber at a Keighley worsted spinning mill.

He was in the Cosy Corner Picture House when the declaration of war was flashed up on screen, and all TA personnel had to report to the nearby Drill Hall.

Isaiah sailed to France the following April, and within six months suffered his first wound when he was hit in the back by a bomb.

Over the next 12 months he was wounded in the left shoulder, suffered pyrexia and scabies, suffered shock from a trench mortar attack, and was wounded in the field.

Into 1917, and he was wounded by a rifle grenade and shot in the left arm, but he managed the last year of the war without mishap.

Isaiah became a miner in 1918, marrying Jessie Dorothea Duncan in 1920 and living in Hunslet then Wentworth before dying in 1930 after being hit by a bus.