A PUPIL from a Bromsgrove school took a trip into the past and traced a relative who died in the First World War.

Richard Bramwell, aged 15, joined a South Bromsgrove High School (SBHS) tour of the battlefields of the 1914-18 war and discovered where his great-uncle, Charles Pollock McCorkell, had fought and was buried.

Pte McCorkell fought with the 11th Battalion of the Manchester Regiment and was wounded in the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign of 1915.

He returned to the Western Front and was killed in action two years later at Ypres, in Belgium, at the age of 26.

Richard and history teacher Quintin Watts traced his grave using the website of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

Pupils from the Charford Road school without relatives who fought in the war instead traced a soldier whose message book was found in an antiques shop by a teacher.

Deputy head Malcolm Davis said the trip was an excellent way for pupils to really understand the huge loss of life in the war.