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I AM like a cat, but I have used up plenty of my nine lives, ” Albert Lear, of Hougher Wall, Audley, told

This statement had a ring of truth, for Mr Lear completed his war service after being wounded in January, 1918, and on returning to his work as a miner, survived the Minnie Pit disaster in Halmerend that same month.

A Reservist, Mr Lear was called up immediately on the outbreak of war, and soon went to France.

He served at Ypres and Mons, and carried with him in later life the scars of severe head wounds.

Although he had a piece of shrapnel lodged near his heart, Mr Lear managed to do odd jobs for a local milk dealer and to pursue his hobby of breeding homing pigeons.

The shelling of Scarborough is one of the many wartime memories of Albert Wemyss, who survived the war and lived at School House, Alsagers Bank.

He gave up gentlemen’s service to don khaki on August 6, 1914, and was in the 20th Hussars before being transferred to the East Yorkshire Regiment.

He went to France early in 1915 and was in the Battle of Loos – scene of some of the bitterest fighting of the Great War. Then he saw considerable action in the Gallipoli Peninsula as a Sergeant in the Machine Gun Section.

He was wounded three times at Salonika. Then, when malaria claimed him as a victim, he was given 18 months to live. But he came back home in 1918 to take up work as a chauffeur, and on the closing of the Midland Coal, Coke and Iron Company, he took up business as a coal merchant on his own account.

While he served in the Home Guard in the Second World War, two sons and a daughter joined the forces – one son losing his life.

Another who took part in the Battle of Loos was miner Alan Mayer, who lived in High Street, Halmerend.

From the Burley Pit, Apedale, Mr Mayer joined the Armed Forces on August 31, 1914, was posted to the North Staffordshire Regiment, and got a small dose of gas when the enemy launched the first gas attack.

At the Battle of Messines Ridge, he was buried for a time by the explosion of a shell.

Returned to England with serious wounds in 1917, he was eventually discharged and returned to his work in the mines. He was one of four brothers in the Army at the time.

Mesopotamia and later India were the battlefields for William Moss, of High Street, Halmerend, who was also with the North Staffordshire