OAKWORTH soldier Norman Walbank was killed on the same day as 18 fellow members of the 4th Battalion Seaforth Highlanders.

More than 100 men from the 4th Battalion died in the same month, September 1917, and in total 414 were killed between June and November that year.

Of these men fighting in the Third Battle of Ypres, only 28 ended up with a grave because the bodies of the rest were lost forever in the mud.

Private Walbank, 31, a Keighley born father-of-two, is one of these many proud Highlanders whose bodies were never recovered.

Andy Wade, from the Men of Worth Project, said the names of the men are only remembered on memorial panels at Tyne Cot Cemetery, Belgium, and local memorials back home in the UK.

He said: “The battlefield conditions were so harsh that not one member of this battalion killed in September 1917 has a known grave.”

Norman is remembered at Oakworth War Memorial in Holden Park, and on the Oakworth Wesleyan Roll of Honour in Oakworth Methodist Church.

Norman had started work as an errand boy in a worsted mill at the age of 14, before going on to marry Mary Hollings of Stanbury and having two sons Nigel and Angus.