HUNDREDS of men from Wiveliscombe and the surrounding areas who fought in the war are remembered in a book.

Wivey Boys: A Great War Register is a record of the men and women who served in the 1914-1918 hostilities.

Sue Farrington, assisted by Glenda Anderson, spent several years researching the book.

The names of 55 men who made the ultimate sacrifice are recorded on the war memorials in the parish church, while an additional 238 men and women who joined the colours in the first year are listed on a wooden panel at the back of the church.

Wivey Boys also lists the names of more than 200 more previously unrecorded people who served during the following three years of the Great War.

In addition to brief biographies of more than 400 people, the book contains sections on the town’s war memorials and those of the Ten Parishes, a time-line and comprehensive glossary, appendices and more than 300 hundred illustrations, together with details of many other aspects of the war.

There are some fascinating facts, such as one officer who left Ypres at 5am one morning and was home in Wiveliscombe by 5pm the same day; ten young men were held as prisoners-of-war; the women of the town who kept things together at home and contributed with their work in the local Voluntary Aid Detachment; and the Army Service Corps and the Mule Remount Depot, which was based in the farms surrounding the town during the early years of the war.

Since the book's publication, the identity of an 'unknown soldier' has been revealed - locals Riley Salter and Gerry Vile named him as grocer's errand boy Ernest Walter 'Willow' Rankmore.

Born in 1894, he was one of 25 Wivey Boys who went to India with the 5th Battalion, Somerset Light Infantry, moving to Mesopotamia two years later an serving with the 4th SLI until he was demobbed in July 1919.

He then worked in the wine and spirit department of town brewery Messrs Arnold and Hancock and played rugby and cricket for the town before his death aged 44 in 1938.