THE great great niece of a soldier killed in 1917 has told how her family was able to honour him - and find out about his death and burial - thanks to The Press.

Angela Lambert-Dowell said her branch of the family had only ever known that Walter Hudson had served in Northern France in 1916 and gone missing, presumed dead, on June16, 1917. “We did not know what had happened after that,” she said.

But then The Press reported last Thursday that Walter was amongst six fallen soldiers whose names were being entered into the King’s Book of York Heroes at York Minster, which would be read out on the Mansion House steps on Saturday.

Angela said: “My uncle Richard rang me, as he had been reading the article that morning, asking if I thought the Walter Hudson mentioned in the report could be ‘our Walter Hudson?’.

“I replied that I didn’t know, but we had better make some inquiries. Walter Hudson is my uncle’s great uncle and my great great uncle.

“So I telephoned the archives department at York Minster and they confirmed the name, and we were able to work out that it was our Walter, by identifying his parents’ names, being my great great grandparents.

“They confirmed that someone had researched this to prove that Walter Hudson should be added to the King's Book.

“I asked them to forward my telephone number on to that person, as it was highly likely we were related. I rang my uncle back and we both said we needed to be at the Mansion House in the morning to hear his name read out.”

Then, like a scene from TV’s 'Who do you think you are’ programme, she received a call from a woman who was her cousin several times removed and they chatted, sharing stories about their family.

“Dorothy had done a fantastic job of researching Walter’s story. He had been found in 1933, where he had fallen, by a French farmer at Fontaine-les-Croisilles, and laid to rest in a nearby Canadian War Cemetery.”

She said they all met up by the Mansion House, where Walter’s name was read out by the Lord Mayor, Cllr Keith Orrell. “It was a very moving experience, hearing the names read out and meeting Dorothy for the very first time,” Angela said.

“We were able to finally honour Walter properly after all the generations that had thought of him and not known the full story.

“A big thank you to the York Press, along with the Minster Archive Department, for enabling this wonderful thing to happen and allowing our branches of the family to be finally reunited.”