A MALVERN man who will be retracing the steps of his grandfather 100 years after he bravely fought for his country in the battle of Gallipoli is inviting others to join him on his journey.

Last year your Worcester News reported Andrew Milton along with his son Daniel would be travelling to the Turkish peninsula where his grandfather Harry Sansome fought with the Worcestershire Yeomanry in the eight-month campaign in 1915 and 1916 in which about 56,000 men died and more than 123,000 injured.

Mr Milton, who served with the Queen’s Royal Hussars for 22 years and today works for the Territorial Army, said he and his son, aged 17, would also be joined by his cousin Jeff Sansome and his sons and would like to invite anyone else who would be interested in taking the eight-day trip in August next year to join them.

“With Remembrance Day coming up I thought I should see if anyone else was interested in coming,” he said.

“We’ll be visiting the sites of the battle, retracing the steps of the Worcestershire Yeomanry.”

During the trip, which runs from Saturday, August 15 until the following Saturday, August 22, the group will visit key sites of the First World War campaign including Cape Helles, where the Allied troops landed, and Chocolate Hill, where the Yeomanry advanced.

Harry Sansome was born at Oak Farm in Claines in 1892 and in 1911 joined the Worcestershire Yeomanry aged 18. As trooper number 1843 he honed his riding skills at a school in Barbourne before the regiment was mobilised at the outbreak of war on August 4, 1914.

After suffering a leg wound at Gallipoli he left the army in 1916 with a commendation for “exemplary” military character and spent the rest of his life at Oak Farm, where he fathered six children, until his death in 1982, aged 89.

The Battle of Gallipoli took place in modern-day Turkey and was an effort by the Allied forces to capture the Ottoman capital of Constantinople, now Istanbul, in order to create a clear passage to Russia.

But both ground and sea operations failed and the Allies withdrew to Egypt having suffered heavy casualties, the majority of which were soldiers from Australia and New Zealand, where April 25 is known as Anzac Day and surpasses Remembrance Day as the country’s biggest commemoration of troops.

Anyone interested in joining Mr Milton and his family on the trip can email Andym559@yahoo.co.uk