FRANK Albert Murray was hailed a hero long before he went off to fight in the First World War.

As a boy growing up in Ingrow he became an expert swimmer and more than once saved someone’s life in the water.

The Keighley News reported how on one occasion he jumped fully clothed into the River Aire at Bingley and rescued a woman who was in “imminent peril” of drowning.

The paper added: “Frank would have slipped unobserved away if that had been possible, and it was with the utmost difficulty that he could be persuaded to give his name to the lady whose life he had saved.”

Frank, son of a Keighley coal merchant, spent four years at Keighley Boys Grammar School and was studying engineering at the Technical School when war broke out in 1914.

Unsurprisingly he signed up with the West Riding Regiment almost immediately, and in July 1915 was posted to the Balkans to fight at the Dardanelles.

He was wounded in the arm at Sulva Bay but soon rejoined his regiment at Gallipoli – but less than four months after arriving from England. He died of dysentery.

Frank, who died in the 1st Canadian Stationery Hospital on the Greek island of Lemnos, was buried at the Portianos Military Cemetery.