A BOURNEMOUTH man researching his family history discovered his uncle won the Military Medal for gallantry in the First World War.

Leonard Kerslake was awarded the medal posthumously – he had been killed by shellfire near Courtrai in Belgium in October 1918, just months after his marriage to a then-17-year-old Christina Lodge.

His nephew Barry Kerslake began searching with his cousins for information about his courageous relative after they turned up a letter written to his new wife by his commanding officer, informing her of his death.

“I miss him a great deal myself,” the officer wrote.

“We were attacking the armoury in the morning of the 14th of October last when your husband was killed by a shell which burst close to him.”

He also told Leonard’s widow about his medal, won after he “rushed a machine gun post and succeeded in turning the gun on the enemy”, holding off a counter-attack.

Mr Kerslake, who lives in Brackendale Road with his wife Muriel, said none of his uncle’s four brothers and two sisters had ever spoken about Leonard to their children.

“I can’t understand why they never spoke about him, he was a hero,” he said.

“We knew nothing about it until we found the letter.

“It has been very exciting, but when you read about what they went through – all the waiting and the shelling, with nothing to eat – it really opens your eyes.”

He said his uncle had been born in Bournemouth in 1898 and was raised in Springbourne, where the family has a long association. When Leonard and Christina were married he was living in Stewart Road, she at Shaftesbury Road.

He had joined the Army early in the war when he was just 16, serving briefly with an unknown Indian regiment before joining the Fourth Battalion, the Worcestershire Regiment.

Posted in Flanders, the battalion took part in the Battle of Courtrai on October 14, 1918. Smoke shells from the British artillery created a dense fog over the battlefield, into which the infantry advanced suffering many casualties – 120 on the first day, including Lance Corporal Kerslake.

Just as the memory of his exploits was lost to his nephews and nieces, the remainder of the life of Christina Kerslake is also unknown to the family.

“My uncle had a short life, but perhaps his widow stayed in the area – perhaps we have family in the area we have never met,” added Barry Kerslake.

Leonard Kerslake is buried with an unknown soldier at Ledeghem Cemetery in Belgium.