A FORMER teacher at Christ College in Brecon has written a book about the school’s old boys who died during the First World War.

The book by Glenn Horridge, who lives in Builth Wells, features 65 biographies of soldiers commemorated on the school’s war memorial and others found during his subsequent research.

They include one Old Breconian who, though reported killed in action, actually survived the war and emigrated to Canada, and another who probably never attended Christ College at all.

Glenn, 58, was born and educated in Cambridge but has made Wales his home for over 20 years. It was while teaching history at Christ College in the run up to the centenary of the outbreak of WWI in 1914 that his interest in the school’s former pupils who sacrificed their lives was kindled.

Titled ‘The Toll of War, Christ College, Brecon 1914-1918’, the book details some extraordinary acts of courage and is a remarkable documentary of both the school’s and Brecon’s connection to the Great War.

Glenn, now head of history at a school in London, described the experience of studying these life stories as very sobering and humbling.

He said: “It made me realise that there are graves of Old Breconians in every theatre of the war, from Africa to Bulgaria, Iraq to India, and Turkey to the United Kingdom.”

In one section of the book he follows the stories of four sets of brothers who died, including Sydney, Arthur and Frank Best, the sons of a former Brecon mayor. The three boys were all killed in Iraq in 1917 within a few weeks of each other. Frank and Stephen were officers in the 1/1st Brecknockshire Battalion, South Wales Borderers which had been sent to India.

From there they both volunteered to lead a draft of 140 Brecknockshire men to reinforce the decimated 4th Battalion in Mesopotamia. All three brothers died leading their men in attempts to capture and secure Baghdad. Their surviving brother, Charles, oversaw the design and building of Christ College’s memorial cross and tablet.

One of the most fascinating stories Glenn came across during his research was that of Second Lieutenant David Cuthbert Thomas. Like many Christ College boys he was the son of a vicar, joining Christ College in 1906. David left the school in 1914 and was soon sent for officer training, where he shared a room with Siegfried Sassoon, who became one of the most famous of the war poets.

The two became close friends but after David was shot in the throat by a sniper, Sassoon went on some increasingly desperate capers killing Germans or taking great risks bringing in the wounded.

For one such action Sassoon was awarded the Military Medal before eventually he had a breakdown. Sassoon and Robert Graves both wrote poems about David and David appears in Sassoon’s novel ‘Memoirs of a Fox Hunting Man’ and Graves’ masterpiece memoir ‘Goodbye to all That’.

To highlight the tragic aftermath of war, Glenn’s book includes the tale of Lieutenant Geoffrey Shapland, whose underage enlistment, physical wounds from the Battle of the Somme and enduring psychological torment were to drive him to suicide in 1924 several years after he had returned to civilian life in Brecon. Copies of The Toll of War, Christ College, Brecon 1914-1918 are on sale at Brecon Books and The Hours bookshop in Brecon and through Christ College.