MILES Little arrived on the front lines right in the middle of some of the heaviest fighting of the First World War.

The Keighley weaving overlooker was sent to France in July 1916 with the British Expeditionary Force when the Battle of the Somme was in full swing.

Corporal Little’s battalion was in action at Leipsig Salient in trenches with names like Quarry Post, Bluff Black Horse Ridge and Forceville.

Within two months of arriving Miles was injured while collecting bombs, but his commanding officers declared the injury trivial and sent him back to his duties.

It was just over two years later when Miles received injuries far from trivial, heavy shelling killing at least five men including him and wounding 55 others.

The attack came only hours after Miles took part in a successful attack that resulted in the capture of Naves village.

Miles was born in Aysgarth, in Yorkshire Dales, in 1891, and by the age of nine was living in Stanbury where his father was a stone quarry man.

Miles’s mother died when he was a young teenager, and he continued living in Stanbury with his widowed farmer father and five siblings.

In 1915 Miles enlisted in the army reserve, remaining in home service until summer 1916