Plans are being finalised for Remembrance Day in Malmesbury on Sunday, to honour the 96 town men who fell in both world wars.

There were 74 men who never returned from the Great War and the 22 who died during the Second.

Robed mace bearers will represent the ancient Old Corporation as military representatives join civic leaders, the Royal British Legion and organisations, from Scouts to schools.

A wreath laying at the Second World War Memorial Gates is at 10am, before a procession to Malmesbury Abbey at 2.30pm.

Town RBL chairman Derek Tilney said: “The 74 men lost in the First World War were just from Malmesbury. But there were two to three times that number who may have survived but came back very seriously wounded.”

Three men who died in 1914 have been remembered. Private Charles Poulton, 29, of Corston, was among a dozen 1st Battalion Wiltshire Regiment fatalities in Neuve Chapelle on October 13.

Adjutant’s groom Fred Heavens, 28, of Ashton Keynes, of the 2nd Wiltshire Regiment, was killed by a shell near Reutel on November 2. Coldsteam Guard Henry Snell, 27, of Luckington, died on Nove-mber 6, of wounds suffered in France a month earlier.