AN AMATEUR historian from Kendal is to pay a poignant visit to a World War One memorial to the missing on Armistice Day next month.

Paul Bramham plans to lay a poppy wreath at the Menin Gate in Ypres, Belgium, on Friday, November 11.

Mr Bramham is a Kendal town councillor, but he told the Gazette the visit would be at his own expense. The Menin Gate is dedicated to almost 55,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers whose graves are unknown.

"I have been to The Last Post ceremony at the Menin Gate several times now and it is the most gut-wrenching experience you can imagine," he told the Gazette.

Next year, Mr Bramham plans a visit to Arnhem, in the Netherlands, where Border Regiment airborne troops landed during Operation Market Garden - a daring attempt to secure bridges and territory in 1944.

He is also to visit Dunkirk, in France, where he says all the Kendal Territorials of D Company 4th Battalion Border Regiment were captured or killed on the rearguard, in 1940. "Kendal was known as 'the town of missing men' and the returned PoWs were given a civic reception in the Georgian Room at the town hall," said Mr Bramham.

Meanwhile, fellow Kendal town councillor Keith Bracey said he was 'honoured' to lay a poppy wreath on the council's behalf at the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme, last month.

Cllr Bracey detoured to Ulverston's twin town, Albert, near Thiepval, during a caravan holiday - picking up the poppy wreath from a friend's house en route, where it had been posted by Kendal Town Council.

"I had thought as I drove through the area how much easier it was for me to be there than it was for my grandfather a hundred years earlier as he laid and repaired the signal cables for the artillery," said Cllr Bracey.

"Kendal Town Council paid for the wreath and the postage; after that it was up to me. That is the role of town councillors; we don't receive or wish for payment, and many do far more than me, although it is very little in comparison to how much these young men gave for us a hundred years ago.

"My role in laying the wreath with a message from the mayor, saying we still remembered what these young men had done for us, was a honour to do."