A PROUD grandson will be travelling to Ypres next month in memory of his grandfather - a Leigh soldier who was killed during the First World War.

Louis Kossuth Mason enlisted in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment in 1898 and after fighting in South Africa during the Boer War he was sent to Antwerp to defend the city before seeing the First and Second Battles of Ypres and the Battle of the Somme.

He was killed in action on May 4, 1917 during the British army's assault of the Hindenburg Line.

Louis' grandson Joe Dunn will be in France for Armistice Day commemorating the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of war and he will parade his grandfather's gallantry medals on November 11.

Louis was born in Liverpool in 1878 and moved to live with his sisters Nellie and Jessie on Waverley Terrace in Leigh when his mother died.

After enlisting in the army he married Glasby in Dublin, in 1903, before having three children Tom, Louis and Eileen.

When Louis was called up to fight in The Great War he was living in Malta and the family travelled back to England to live with Nellie and Jessie in Leigh before moving to Sheffield.

In September 1916, Louis wrote to his wife to tell her he was back in Great Britain after falling off his bike when the brakes failed and he had broken his nose.

In his letter he said: "My nose is broken in three places and I'm pretty well bruised, but they are going to set my nose so everything will be alright.

"This is a lovely hospital and the nurses are very kind but you know I was never a hospital bird.

"I would sooner have got a bullet wound after two years of it, but perhaps it's all for the best love."

Louis visited his family in Sheffield the following Christmas and returned to duty in January 1917 - four months before he died in action.

Joe, who is 66 and lives in Sheffield, said: "He had been at the front for two years and were it not for the biking accident he would not have spent that Christmas with his family. "He returned to the frontline on New Year's Day 1917 and gained a bar to his military medal in April by carrying a wounded soldier back to his own line while under fire."

He added: "I fly out on Sunday, November 9 and on the Monday I will cycle out to Zonnebece and follow the movements of the first battle my grandfather fought in.

"On Armistice Day I will parade his gallantry medals in Ypres at the remembrance service at Menin Gate and it will be the first time the medals will have been paraded, as he never saw them."