BRADFORD'S World War One group has found the grave of actress Prunella Scales’ uncle.

The group, which meets monthly at Bradford's Mechanics Institute Library, was on the last morning of a six-day coach trip to Arras in France when they made the visit.

At first the 22-year-old’s grave in Doullens Cemetery was a mystery because Captain Walter Scales’ battalion of the Bradford Territorials was based many miles away on the date he died, in January 1918. But Bradford World War One group secretary Tricia Platts, said the clues were in the graves next to his.

“Buried on the same day as Walter were two members of the Royal Flying Corps and a third man known to be accidentally killed when undergoing instruction. It is probable that Walter was also hoping to become an airman and died in the same flying accident,” she said.

Captain Scales’ grave was one of the final resting places visited by the group, which hopes to have an official unveiling and dedication ceremony of a new Pals’ Memorial on Serre Road, close to Hebuterne, to mark the end of the Battle of the Somme, on November 19 this year.

A cemetery in the village of Authuille is where many men from the Bradford Territorials, alongside men of the Indian Army, are buried, including Edgar Wilkinson who was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal in action.

He was son of James Arthur and Annie Wilkinson, and brought up with four siblings in a three-bedroom house at back Tamworth Street in the city. He was just 19 when he died and had been a parcel boy for Bradford Corporation tramways.

When the group visited Doullens Cemetery they not only found Captain Scales’ grave but also discovered in the cemetery log that a visitor from Houston, Texas, had visited another Bradford grave on their list, that of John Onions of Ashwell Street, Manningham, who died on September 11, 1916.

He may have been wounded when the 6th battalion attacked across the Ancre river heading towards Thiepval.

His family got a long letter from a British nursing sister Rosetta Miller and researchers from the Bradford group have managed to piece together a story that links her to Samuel Tindall, an assistant master at Bradford Grammar School.

As a young arts student in Liverpool he had lodged with Rosetta’s family.

“Perhaps the name Bradford prompted Rosetta to make the link between the boy she nursed and the lodger with the Miller family all those years go back home in Liverpool.

"Her letter was printed in the Bradford Weekly Telegraph telling his family that surgeons had done their best to save him from a deep shrapnel wound to his back but he died in her presence.

“Before he died I told him I was going to write to you and he asked me to send you his love...He’s been a brave laddie.”