Research into the lives of the men commemorated on a war memorial at St Day has revealed a wide range of wartime experiences among those lost from a single community.

The touching, and sometimes surprising, stories of the men from St Day are told in a new booklet, Beyond the Names by historian Dr Lesley Trotter. While around half of the 39 men listed from First World War fell at well-known battles like the Somme, Dr Trotter found that the rest did not fit the usual image of young men killed in action or dying of wounds in the trenches of the Western Front.

Many were soldiers who died in lesser-known campaigns as far afield as Egypt, the Persian Gulf, Macedonia and India, or succumbed to sickness or disease during or after their military service. Two teenagers died within weeks of enlisting without even leaving the country, while others were older men dying of lung disease aggravated by army living conditions.

“The variety of individual stories is fascinating,” said Dr Trotter. “There are miner pals who joined up together in the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry and then went on to serve in the important 251st Tunnelling Company of the Royal Engineers; emigrants from local families who enlisted in South Africa, Canada and New Zealand, and a talented amateur artist who went down with his ship during the Battle of Jutland.”

The booklet also tells the stories of the local men lost in the Second World War, including a PoW shot trying to escape and an airline pilot killed while ferrying aircrew to Canada.

Beyond the Names: the stories of the men commemorated on St Day War Memorial, is available, price £1.50, from St Day Post Office and the Cornish Studies Library in Redruth. Copies can also be ordered online via the author’s website humblehistory.com.