ON the hall wall of Margaret Whitton’s home in Cottingley is a photographic portrait of a man in the uniform of the Royal Scots Fusiliers. The cap he wears has a double ribbon.

Sometime between 1906, when he was married, and 1914, Samuel Spencer joined the Royal Scots Fusiliers. Why he decided to join a Scottish regiment when he was raised in Shipley is not known.

Family members wouldn’t discuss his military career, according to Mrs Margaret Whitton of Bingley. Samuel Spencer was the grandfather of Mrs Whitton’s late husband Colin and was born in April 1882.

When he was killed on September 22, 1914, in France, he left behind a wife, Edith, and a young daughter, Gladys.

Edith and Samuel were both 24 when they got married on December 1, 1906, at Shipley Parish Church. After the wedding they went to live at Salisbury Street, Shipley. By trade Samuel was a stone mason.

But when he joined the Royal Scots he was living in Manchester, said Tricia Platts, secretary of Bradford’s World War 1 Group. His address on the 1911 census was 63 Water Street, Manchester. He was a bar worker in a public house.

On August 14, 1914, 10 days after Britain declared war on Germany, Sam Spencer, service number 7268, and the 1st battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers became one of the first British Army formations to move to France.

The German Imperial Army had been sent into Belgium, violating that country’s neutrality, to punch a hole through to the Channel ports. By the beginning of September 1914 the Germans were fast approaching Paris, with British and French forces falling back. Tricia Platts takes up the story: “German victory was a definite possibility and the Allied commander, General Joffre, prepared to launch a counter-offensive. As night fell on September 5, the British Expeditionary Force began to halt approximately 40 kilometres south-east of Paris. For the next two days, British I, II and III Corps advanced north-eastwards, encountering only minor resistance.

“The Germans had reached the limit of their advance and were now carrying out a tactical retreat.

On September 8, British infantry brigades advancing towards the Marne came under intense machine-gun and artillery fire from German units in La Ferte sous Jouarre on the north bank of the river.

“The British withdrew and began bombarding the German positions. By mid-afternoon they had entered the town in force. The Germany armies were now in full retreat to the north and the east, hotly pursued by British and French forces.

“Retreating German units fought rearguard actions under prolonged rainfall throughout September 11. By the following morning they had occupied defensive positions on the high ground overlooking the northern banks of the River Aisne.

“The Battle of the Marne, referred to in the French press as the ‘Miracle of the Marne’, halted the month-long German advance and ended the possibility of a quick Germany victory.

“By November battle lines had been entrenched that would remain virtually unchanged for almost four years. The BEF suffered almost 13,000 casualties during the Battle of the Marne.” One of them was Samuel Spencer, whose body was never found. “And from the day the letter came,” says Mrs Whitton in her poem The Portrait on the Wall, “she never spoke at all / About the handsome, fair haired man / Whose portrait hangs upon the wall.”