Thomas Henry Cripps asked his wife to kiss his children and said he would see them soon.

Ten days later he was dead.

Mr Cripps' grandson, Tony Taylor, 79, from Kennington, has read and re-read his grandfather's last letter hundreds of times, but still a mystery remains.

He explained: "My grandad sent the letter with a small piece of shrapnel in the shape of a cross.

"In his letter he says he will tell his wife and children all about it when he sees them. But of course he died before he got the chance.

"My grandmother kept the shrapnel, then my mum had it, and now me. It is a mystery that went with him to the grave."

Before war broke out, Thomas Cripps lived at 8 New Street, St Ebbe's, Oxford, and worked for the 'corporation' (the council).

A married father of three, in wartime he became a gunman in the Royal Garrison Artillery 128th heavy battery.

Mr Taylor said: "My grandfather was a great letter writer and sent my grandmother and their children dozens, sometimes with coins, if he had them.

"His letters are filled with endearments to his family, as are his many postcards, some of which have touching poems on them and pictures for the children.

"Of course he didn't know he was writing his last letter when he sent that piece of shrapnel – how could he?

“But just 10 days later he was killed at Poperinge in Belgium and is buried in the Brandhoek Military Cemetery. My mum Lily was just 10 years old."

He added: "Each November when I was a boy, my mum would shed a few tears on Remem- brance Sunday.

"A few weeks ago I went to St Ebbe's Church and found his name on the Roll of Honour.

“I have seen a tiny photograph of his grave and I still have that mysterious piece of shrapel.

“I like to think he fashioned it to give to my mum as a pendant, but we will never know."

As children, Ronald and Vera Watts knew their father George had fought in the Great War – he had the medals and the pictures to prove it.

But like many young men who returned from the horrors of the trenches, George Watts was a closed book when it came to revealing what had happened on those far off and God-forsaken battlefields.

Years after his death at the age of 49, in April,1942, they would learn more, when they found his pocket book, a fascinating ledger of names, dates and interesting tit-bits that he kept during his time as a Sergeant with the Ox & Bucks Regiment.

Mr Watts, 83, said: "It contains all sorts – dates, names, football results. It's written in pencil and that's actually a good thing because it is clearer than it might have been in pen.

“It's pretty amazing to think this tiny little book has been to the Great War and returned again."

George Watts enlisted in the Ox & Bucks on August 29, 1914 and after battling consecutive doses of German Measles, English Measles and rheumatic fever he was sent to France two days before Christmas in 1915.

The following August he left for the Somme and just three days later was injured and sent back home to a military hospital.

On December 23 1916, while on leave, he married Louisa, who also lived in the village of Stanton St John, but seven days later he was shipped back to France.

His tiny leather bound pocket book states: ‘9-4-1917 – big attack – lots of casualties.’ A month later he was wounded again and hospitalised, b ut only for a short time before being sent back to France again.

He finally came home to his 'new' wife for good on February 5, 1918. Daughter Vera, now 90, was born on Boxing Day of that year.

She said: "Dad literally had holes in his back, his shoulder and his leg. He was awfully shot up, but he had to work.

“Before he left he had worked on the farm. He returned to this but then he went into building. He died young never having told us much about the war. The men didn't talk about it.

"Lots left from this village. We were only 300 people but all the young men seemed to disappear overnight and some never came home. We got our dad back. We were lucky."

Jean Warne, 77, from Wootton, near Abingdon, didn't know that her father had lost his sight because of mustard gas until a John Radcliffe doctor told her, 60 years later.

Mrs Warne's father, Reginald Kirby, had red and weepy eyes for as long as she could remember. She said: "When dad was about 80 I took him for an appointment at the Oxford eye hospital and his doctor started telling a group of students about how my father had gone blind for a full six months during the First World War.

"It was the first I knew of it. Apparently he had been gassed in the trenches. I also learned that his full recovery after six months was something of a medical miracle. He was also one of the first people in the world to try prototype contact lenses in the 1940s and while his sight was always bad, the fact he could see at all seemed to really impress the doctors."

"Reg", as he was known to his family, went to Iffley School and afterwards trained as a tailor, working from his family home in Morrell Avenue, Oxford. Born in 1894, he went to war at the age of 20, with the Ox & Bucks Light Infantry.

Mrs Warne said: "We know from dad's postcards that he spent time in a hospital in Cambridge in 1915 after he was hurt.

"Then he went back to the war and served in Belgium and France. I wasn't born until years later and even though dad had medals, including one for blowing up a lot of German ammunition, he didn't want to talk about the war.

“I can only remember him talking about it one time, when he told how he and his lot played football against the German soldiers one Christmas Day.

"He said they played well together and even swapped names at the end, before someone piped up it was time to get back to fighting!"