Readers share their tales of the First World War Mrs Edridge, 95, sent in a photograph of her father, alongside several other amputee servicemen. She said he was the first man to be fitted with an articulated artificial leg which, when activated by a switch in his pocket, bent at the knee. But eventually it was found that he did not have enough of the limb left to support the prosthetic, so he had to rely on crutches. Mrs Edridge wrote: "As a little girl I remember sitting on his knee and wondering how other little girls managed because wouldn't the other leg get in the way?" Henry Speer, from Nettleham, near Lincoln His mother, Isabel Speer, is one of few people left alive who still have personal memories of the conflict. She was born in January 1913, in Croydon. Her father, Vincent Bromage, was a deputy inspector in the General Indian Police, based near Calcutta. At the outbreak of war, Isabel, her elder sister Anne and younger brother James, aged four months, were with their mother, Gladys, in Liverpool, about to sail for India to join their father. Mrs Bromage telegraphed her husband to ask if they should continue. He said yes and they sailed. The family spent the next two years in India and another son, John, was born there in 1916. Isabel, Anne, James and their mother in 1914. Isabel has fleeting memories of her time there - including one of her father's elephant putting its head and trunk over a garden wall at teatime and scoffing the cakes. From the war's outbreak, Mr Bromage had been keen to sign up in the army, but the police authorities wanted to retain him. Eventually, he got a posting to serve in the Rifle Brigade and in 1916, the family sailed for England in the SS Caledonia, a P&O liner. While passing through the Red Sea, the vessel collided with another, and rumours swept the ship that it had been rammed by the enemy and was sinking. Isabel, then three, recalls: "We were all huddled together on deck wearing our life jackets and John was protesting vigorously. An accident had occurred when another ship crashed into the side of ours. Some said it was in the pay of the Germans. Our fears that we should sink luckily proved unfounded. She can remember her mother standing in a doorway leading on deck with John in her arms in his tiny life jacket crying. Her father was to the right of her, on deck, holding James. Anne was in front of them with Isabel looking back at them. The ship arrived safely in Britain and Mr Bromage went to serve as a stretcher-bearer on the Western Front. His wife and children settled in Limpsfield, Surrey. Her memories of the conflict include seeing the burning of the factory several miles away, in London. The children were called from their beds to watch the blaze in the distance, from their nursery window. It is thought this could have been the explosion of a munitions factory at Silvertown, east London, in January 1917. On another occasion, the family went to visit an uncle and aunt, Fred and Lottie Wait, who lived at a rectory in Hasketon, near Woodbridge, Suffolk, when a zeppelin was reported nearby. Isabel recalls hearing the noise and being ordered inside. We [Isabel and her sister, Anne] were walking our dolls down a deserted lane when the Zeppelin was sighted. Aunt Lottie appeared, waving wildly for us to return to the rectory immediately. It was not easy to run and push a dolls pram simultaneously. The Waits suffered particularly during the war. Their two sons, Percy and Charles, both died in action in 1916, within six weeks of each other. Tragedy struck Isabel's own family after the war ended, when her mother died in the 1919 flu epidemic. Her father returned from service and Isabel can recall a large bonfire built on the local heath, shortly after the end of the war, on which a straw effigy of the Kaiser was burnt. Mr Bromage later returned to India and later remarried. Isabel was raised by a succession of relatives and friends. In 1936, she married Lionel Templeman Speer, who had served as a subaltern in the King's Shropshire Light Infantry, during the war. He saw action on the Western Front and was taken prisoner near Bapaume in 1918 and spent the rest of the war incarcerated in the citadel at Mainz. He later became a clergyman, dying in 1981. Isabel, now 100, has five children, and two stepchildren, as well as 18 grandchildren, and 29 great grandchildren. She lives in Emsworth, Hampshire. George Fish, from Bulcote, near Nottingham George Fish, Lieut Cresswell's nephew When Lieutenant Leonard Creswell was shot and wounded during an ill-fated attack on an enemy-occupied village during the First World War, he found himself far from the safety of British lines. Lieut Cresswell was saved by L/Cpl William Callaghan under heavy fire; both died from injuries sustained during the war But among his platoon was a man who risked his own life to help the 21-year-old officer. Lance Corporal William Callaghan, a former bricklayer, picked up Creswell and conveyed him back hundreds of yards, under heavy fire, to the shelter of the British position, where despite the best efforts of his comrades, he died three days later. This feat of bravery not only earned Callaghan, 35, the Military Medal, but also led to a touching friendship with the family of the dead man, as they entered into correspondence with one another, leading to a meeting when the soldier returned from the front. But within four years, Callaghan too was dead - from malaria caught during the campaign - and the connection between the two families was broken. Now, almost a century on, that bond has been restored, after relatives of the older soldier tracked down those of the younger officer. Will Callaghan and his medals which are in the possession of his family in Clacton on Sea (PAGE ONE) The two families once again entered into correspondence, before meeting up to exchange stories and information about the two soldiers who had brought them together. The two men had been serving in the York and Lancaster Regiment in the Salonika Campaign in the Balkans, where Allied forces had been sent, initially to support Serbia against the combined attack by Germany, Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria. By the time the expedition arrived, the Serbs had been defeated, but the British remained in the area, and mounted operations against the Bulgarians. On October 11 1916, they were tasked with driving enemy troops from a village near Bairakli Jum'a. But their unit ran into a vastly superior force and had to withdraw. Creswell was hit early on. Callaghan managed to drag him back around 200 yards under heavy fire. He then paused in a corn field, still far from British lines, where another soldier, Lieutenant Coppock, was able to ease some of the officer's pain with his medical kit. Coppock then waited with him, while Callaghan and others went back to find a stretcher. They returned, some time later, with a door, and were able to get Creswell back. Another of those to assist was a Private Hammond. Creswell was taken back to a field ambulance and, shortly before his death, was well enough to be able to dictate to an orderly a brief letter to his mother, telling her he had been wounded and "am going on as well as can be expected." He said: "Will write again in a day or two. With very best love from Len xxxxx. It is one of several letters kept by George Fish, Creswell's nephew, relating to his uncle's life and death which, around a decade ago, he assembled into a small booklet. Also in there is a letter from Callaghan to Creswell's parents, George and Louisa, written shortly after the incident. In it, the soldier modestly played down his role and praised his officer: "I should just like to tell you that your son was my Platoon Officer; and above all he was an "officer and a gentleman" - need I say more? - and I am confident he would have done the same for any of us." The letter had been sent in response to one from George Creswell, which Mr Fish, from Bulcote, Notts, had never read. But while his family had cherished and preserved that letter from Callaghan, on the other side of the country, relatives of Callaghan's had done the same thing with George Creswell's letter. It had been kept by Callaghan's sister and then her granddaughter, Kate Hall, who displayed it prominently in her home in Clacton-on-Sea, Essex. That family knew little of what their ancestor had done to assist Creswell, or even what his first name was. However, what Callaghan's actions had meant to the other soldier's family were clear from the letter. George Creswell had written: "I know you don't want to thanking and that everyone of you would do the same for one another and think nothing more of it. We old folks at home think very much of it and are more grateful thank words can express... Please accept the grateful thanks of a mother and father. Around five years ago, these words inspired Mrs Hall's daughter, Amanda Estall, 41, to investigate the incident. She obtained her relative's records from the National Archives and, using details from there, was able to identify Creswell through the database of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Through family history websites, she tracked down Mr Fish. The two families have restored the link forged by their forebears almost a century ago. Mr Fish, 85, himself a former soldier, said: "Both families are delighted to share all we have learned from each other about Len and Will. We have become good friends, have visited one another and correspond regularly. It is a continuing relationship. Mrs Estall, a care assistant, said: "It had always been passed down that my great great uncle was had been really brave during the war and he really busted a gut for a young officer. But we didn't know the whole story. I had just keep looking at this letter and his picture and that is what galvanised me to find out what had happened. It is fantastic to have found Creswell's family. We write to each other all the time and George rings up. It is really, really nice. It has been almost 100 years and yet we have got this strong link. The two men had very different backgrounds. Creswell, the son of a draper from Nottingham, had been a pupil at Magdalen College School, Brackley, before returning to his hometown to train as an accountant. He was a keen singer and sportsman. When he died, he had been in the army for two years, only three days of which had been spent at home. He had spent six months in the trenches in France before being posted to Salonika. Callaghan, meanwhile, the son of an iron moulder from Rotherham, meanwhile, was a bricklayer, who had originally signed up to serve in the Second Boer War. He later joined the reserves and was called up on the outbreak of the First World War. He too had served on the Western Front until being posted to Salonika. After contracting malaria, he was removed from his fighting unit, but was able to serve in the Labour Corps. At the end of the war he returned to Rotherham where he was working as a furnace pit man at a steelworks. In 1920, his malarial condition flared up once more and led to pneumonia. Within five days, he had died. Mr Fish sent the Sunday Telegraph on the booklet he had produced. In one another, Creswell's captain reveals how the death meant he had lost every one of the 13 other officers with whom he had left England the previous year. In another, Coppock describes how Creswell had been as the men bought him back: "Although in some pain, Len was cheerful and actually telling his men to keep down and not expose themselves to enemy fire. While at the Field Ambulance, Len sent word back thanking everyone who had in anyway helped him. The battalion had lost four officers and 92 men in the attack, from a total force of around 320. Another letter, from a Lt Col Bailey, tells how the target was later captured, at the end of the month, when 300 prisoners were taken. The only meeting between Callaghan and Creswell's parents occurred early in 1917, when he attended the unveiling of a plaque for his officer at a local church. Since then, the church has been demolished, as has another church in which it was installed. Attempts by Mr Fish to get the memorial installed in a third church have, so far, been rebuffed. Charlotte Corbett-Thompson, from Alicante, Spain It is perhaps the most evocative of all poems to have come from the Western Front. Written by John McCrae, In Flanders Fields has become one of the most popular and oft-quoted works from the conflict and its reference to poppies helped ensure the flowers became the symbol of remembrance for the war's dead. But the poem almost never made it beyond the trenches, because the poet did not initially rate the work. A letter to the Telegraph from the daughter of one of his comrades, Francis Scrimger, a Victoria Cross winner, reveals it was only the intervention of her father that allowed the work to reach a wider audience. McCrae had a dual role as second-in-command and chief surgeon of the 1st brigade of the Canadian Field Artillery. He wrote the poem in May 1915 after presiding over the funeral of friend and fellow soldier, Alexis Helmer. He had died in the Second Battle of Ypres, in which both McCrae and Scrimger, also a doctor, had served. Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, pictured here with his dog, had to be persuaded to publish his famous war poem, 'In Flanders Fields' McCrae is said to have noted how poppies quickly grew around the graves of those who died at Ypres, and composed the work the following day, while sitting in the back of an ambulance. He is known to have been reluctant to send the poem to publishers. Various candidates have been credited with helping to change his mind, but Charlotte Corbett-Thompson makes clear her father's intervention was crucial. She wrote: "One of his companions surgeons was John McCrae, the Canadian poet whose In Flanders Field was only published because my father saved it from being destroyed as McCrae did not think much of it and persuaded him to sent it to publishers - the rest is history." The poem was first published on December 8 1915 in Punch magazine. It had previously been rejected by The Spectator magazine, but quickly became popular. Parts were used in appeals to recruit soldiers and to raise money selling war bonds. Scrimger's interjection is said to have been after the initial rejection, when he removed it from a bin, where McCrae had thrown it. He then encouraged McCrae to persevere in his efforts. Less than a month before the poem was written, Scrimger, earned his Victoria Cross for an incident during the Ypres battle, where the German army launched one of the first chemical attacks in the history of war. Scrimger, also a Canadian, was captain in charge of a dressing station, at a farmhouse near to the front line. The advancing Germans were bombarding the area with intense artillery fire and their infantry were within sight. Scrimger directed the removal of the wounded under this heavy fire until he, and an injured man, Captain Harold Macdonald, were the last left there. Scrimger carried the wounded officer out of the farmhouse to a road. The bombardment forced Scrimger to stop and place Macdonald on the road. Scrimger then protected him with his own body. During a lull in the gunfire Scrimger again carried Macdonald toward help. When he was unable to carry him any further, he remained with the wounded man until help could be obtained. Mrs Corbett-Thompson, who lives in Alicante, Spain, said that her mother had been her father's head nurse throughout the war. When peace came, Scrimger returned to Montreal, where he became chief surgeon of the Royal Victoria Hospital. He died in 1937, aged 57, when Mrs Corbett-Thompson was only 13. His family believe his early death was a consequence of the gas he had inhaled during the war, and also through overwork. McCrae died of pneumonia before the war ended, in 1918, aged 45. We are interested in receiving readers" memories, stories and tributes relating to the First World War. Please send them to First World War, Telegraph Media Group, 111 Buckingham Palace Road, London SW1W 0DT, or email firstworldwar@telegraph.co.uk