FRED BINNS survived 15 years in the Army including at least three battles during the First World War.

He narrowly avoided the sinking of the ship that brought him back to the British Isles for treatment after he was wounded in 1916.

But it was cancer that killed the Keighley man as he carried out war duties back in his homeland following his recuperation.

Fred, then serving as a signalling instructor in Edinburgh, fell ill while visiting his family on leave in Keighley.

Fred had been born in 1882 in Keighley, son of moulder Frederick Binns and his wife Martha.

He joined the Army shortly before the outbreak of the Boer War, serving as a gymnastics instructor before being sent to India in 1904.

His five years’ service in India was described as exemplary and he received two good conduct badges, before leaving the army in 1913.

The following year Fred, working as a moulder in Barnoldswick, was ‘recalled to the colours’ and joined the 3rd Battalion Royal Scots for war service in France.

He took part in the famous retreat from Mons, the battles of the Aisne and Marne, and fighting at La Bassoe where he was wounded in the foot and back by shrapnel.

Fred was transported to hospital in Ireland, and the ship in which he travelled on was sunk by a mine on its next voyage.

Fred became a policeman in Weymouth, then a signalling instructor in Edinburgh.

He was taken ill on a visit home, and following treatment at the Spencer Street Hospital he was taken to Beckett Street Leeds, where he died in April 1916 from a melanotic sarcoma of the liver.

During Fred's funeral in Oakworth the route to Christ Church was lined with soldiers, including nine men from the Spencer Street Hospital.

Fred is remembered with a special memorial stone in the churchyard, because the original gravestone has been lost.

He is named on the Keighley St Peter’s Church Roll of Honour and the Barnoldswick Conservative Club War Memorial.