IT was a blustery day in November during the early 1920s and the man from the British Legion asked if the lady would like to buy a poppy in memory of the soldiers who had served in the Great War.

The woman turned and looked the man straight in the eye. “Poppy? No thank you. I have no need for them. For all my poppies are growing in Flanders and on the Somme…”

It was like a line from a novel, yet Frederick Sherratt’s mother was voicing an awful truth. For this grief-stricken woman had lost four – and possibly all five – of her brothers in the catastrophe of 1914-18.

Ninety years have now passed since the guns fell silent on the Western Front.

But those words have haunted Mr Sherratt for years, and so he at last decided to discover more about his own links with a lost generation.

The 82-year-old retired mining research engineer, of McIntyre Road, St John’s, Worcester, first became interested in his family’s tragic story a few years ago when he attended an internet course.

He learnt how relatively easy it was to access information about casualties, and encouraged by his daughter Annette Kelly, of Hallow, he embarked on his journey of discovery.

His first step was to contact the Birmingham War Research Society, a unique organisation dedicated to finding the graves of loved ones killed in the two world wars.

He said: “I was one of five brothers.

“I suspect that we may have been some kind of sub-conscious replacement for the siblings my poor mother lost. I’m also curious about the impact such a scale of bereavement would have had on families in those days.

“Neighbours must have been very different to how they are today.

“People would undoubtedly have supported each other as more and more black curtains appeared at the windows.”

I travelled with Mr Sherratt to France and Belgium, and soon realised that his family’s sacrifice was literally written in words of blood, an awful chronology that seemed to trace the progression of the conflict.

Our first stop was at Roisel, near St Quentin. It was here that Pte Ernest Whitehouse of the Leicestershire Regiment was killed in September, 1918.

He died two months before the end of the war as the Allies pushed the Germans back over the Hindenburg Line. He was just 20.

The next day, we travel to the Ypres Salient where two more brothers are buried.

The first visit is to Mendinghem – this place is the product of the British Tommies’ typical gallows humour – where we find the grave of Pte Frederick Whitehouse of the South Staffordshire Regiment.

There is no age for him, but the fact that he died in September, 1917, indicates that he perished during the catastrophic Passchendaele offensive. Mendinghem was a casualty clearing station, hence the punning name.

Our last call of the day is at Klein Vierstraat, another Salient cemetery. This time we are searching for Pte Joseph Whitehouse, of the East Yorkshire Regiment.

Once again, the date and vicinity of his death – May 25, 1915 – tells us in which battle he may have lost his life.

In this case it would probably have been the tail-end of the Second Battle of Ypres, notorious for the Germans’ first use of poison gas. Joseph was aged 25. There is no mistaking the effect this is having on Mr Sherratt.

There are tears welling up in his eyes at every stop, and I try to allow a respectful amount of time to elapse before I ask how he feels.

He manages to say how emotional it all is, but then falters and stares over my shoulder at some middle distance on the now peaceful fields of Flanders. The red-rimmed eyes say more than words ever could.

Monday dawns with the apt metaphor of a blood-red sky and we head for the battlefield of Loos and Dud Corner cemetery.

Here we find the name of Cpl John Whitehouse on the memorial to the missing.

John was 35 when he was killed on October 13, 1915, fairly old for Kitchener’s armies, but he obviously rallied to the call of king and country and left his potter’s wheel for the green fields of France.

Cpl Whitehouse, of the North Staffordshire Regiment is in good company here. Also on the memorial is inscribed the name of Fergus Bowes-Lyon, the late Queen Mother’s brother, and that of a distant relative of mine etched in the panel for the Northamptonshire Regiment.

The light is now rapidly failing and this seems to indicate the end of Mr Sherratt’s journey.

However, it may only just be beginning, for at three of the cemeteries, there are entries in the visitors’ book that indicate another branch of his family – unknown to him – have also been on a journey of discovery.

To discover the identity of these young men is Mr Sherratt’s next task.

Sadly, there are no surviving photographs of the four brothers, nor are there any letters or diaries. He will have to start from scratch.

And as if four are not enough, there may actually be a fifth brother who lost his life. William Whitehouse’s name appears on the memorial at Basra, Iraq, in what was once Mesopotamia.

He may have died fighting the Turks.

Frederick Sherratt wore his poppy with pride this remembrance season.

But although the paper version on his lapel may fade, there can be no diminishing of those other rather different poppies that will remain on the Somme and in Flanders fields until the end of time.