CROSS ROADS man Herbert Shread signed up for five years in the Royal Navy in 1913 as the war clouds gathered over Europe.

The Keighley-born textile worker survived to the last year of the First World War while serving on a variety of warships.

But only seven days before the arrival of peace, Stoker Shread died of pneumonia after catching flu while on a naval base.

Herbert grew up in Micklethwaite and Stanbury and by 1911, at the age of 16, he was working as a bobbin taker off for a local worsted manufacturer in 1911, at the age of 16.

Two years later he enlisted in the Navy, training on HMS Victory II at Portsmouth and becoming a class 2 stoker.

His first active service was on board HMS Latona, a protected cruiser and minelayer dating from the previous century.

He went on to serve aboard HMS Neptune, a 20,000-ton dreadnought battleship, and the R class destroyer HMS Tristram.

But it was during his last posting, to HMS Columbine, a recently-opened shore base for torpedo boat destroyers of the Grand Fleet, that he contracted the fatal illness.

Herbert’s name is recorded on the Cross Roads war memorial in the park’s bowling pavilion, and the Cross Roads Primitive Methodist Sunday School roll of honour at Keighley Library.