Aid worker Dr Brian Mathew, the Lib Dem Parliamentary candidate for North Wiltshire, has been researching the First World War diaries of his grandfather Cecil Mathew.

Dr Mathew, who lives in Yatton Keynell, said: “He was born in Cape Town, South Africa, but brought back to England as a boy to be educated in England. During the First World War he met my grandmother Emy Alexander, who was a nurse to the troops. They fell in love and married after the war.

“Like many young men he enlisted just a month after hostilities broke out and found himself sent first to Salonika in early 1915, before joining the Royal Flying Corps and being posted to France as a flight lieutenant, where he was eventually shot down over the Western Front and taken prisoner.

“Grandfather continued with the RAF in the 1920s as a test pilot, then left to run first a steel mill, then a garage before rejoining the RAF in 1939 and running Farnborough aerodrome for the rest of the Second World War.

“The photograph of him sitting in a BE 2E would have been taken while he was training to fly in England in 1917. The plane was nicknamed the ‘Pterodactyl’ after the flying dinosaur.”

A note on the back of the photograph written by Cecil Mathew to his grandmother before a posting to Salonika reads: “A snapshot taken early in 1915 on one of the practice treks we used to take...

“They were quite good fun – we used to take wagons and men out for three or four days and camp in any old field, sleeping under the wagons. This proved excellent training for the Salonika days.”

Dr Mathew has also sent a photograph of his grandfather with Ernie Sliter, a Canadian who was the observer/rear gunner in the plane when they were both shot down, Mr Sliter being wounded four times.

“After they crash-landed in no man’s land my grandfather pulled Mr Sliter out of the crashed aeroplane and carried him to the German lines as they could not escape,” says Dr Mathew.

“Because grandfather spoke good German he insisted that Ernie be well looked after and, despite not being an officer, that he be taken to the same prisoner of war camp. Sure enough they spent the last year of the war together at a prisoner of war camp near Heidelberg.”