IT can be a bit tricky writing about your colleagues, especially if they are not dead. And looking down the editorial floor I can see John Phillpott is decidedly still here.

Having strolled along the boulevard that is Worcester’s South Quay, and as his regular column might note, passing a flock of greater spotted students on the riverbank, plus a couple of badgers mating in the long grass to the sound of the cuckoo, he has arrived to put in a shift on the sub-editors’ desk.

John once overlorded this frenetic operation, but he is now taking it easier, which has given him time to write a book.

Anyone who sits within conversation distance of the ‘Captain’ – a nickname that has stuck since his spell as chief sub – will know he has three particular fields of interest.

Popular music (he is an accomplished guitarist/singer); his boyhood garden shed (in which he and a picture of actress Jane Russell spent many happy hours) and the First World War. It is the last of the trio that provides the subject for his book.

As John acknowledges, the path from inspiration to publication of The Shilling has been a long one. It has been trodden every step of the way by his long suffering family and much of the way by his colleagues in the Worcester News newsroom. For if he is not regaling with tales of his teenage friendship with a member of Pinkerton’s Assorted Colours (Top 10 in 1966 with Mirror, Mirror) he is discussing the finer points of battlefields revisited and some of his excursions have been adventures indeed.

It was a chance discovery while rummaging about at home that took him back over the years. To “long ago and far away”, as Kipling once said. At the back of a drawer John came across an old coin, a Boer War Kruger shilling, which according to family legend his great uncle carried as a talisman during the Great War.

Ernest Phillpott fought with the Northamptonshire Regiment during the opening battles in France and Flanders and was eventually invalided out of the Army in 1917. But before then there was an incredible story to be uncovered.

Imagination fired by finding and holding this ancient artefact and armed with information supplied by the regimental museum in Northampton and the Public Records Office at Kew, south London, John embarked on a personal pilgrimage.

He traced the journey of the British Expeditionary Force after its arrival at French ports in August 1914, and followed the Army’s route as it advanced to stem the German invasion of Belgium.

He said: “I discovered that colour sergeant Ernest Phillpott was the first man to be commissioned in the field during the First World War, eventually rising to the rank of captain. This was quite an achievement for a working class man who had left school at the age of 13.”

Keeping as true as possible to the original route taken by the BEF, John journeyed from Le Havre, where the Northamptonshires landed, on to Mons in Belgium, the site of the first battle involving the regiment.

He said: “I then traced the line of its withdrawal – the legendary retreat from Mons – crossing the rivers Aisne and Marne where the German flank had been finally turned. That action brought about the so-called ‘race to the sea’ and this was why my journey ended at Ypres.”

With the help of the War Research Society, a Birmingham-based organisation, John was able to locate the actual field near the Menin Road outside Ypres where Ernest Phillpott had been wounded attempting to carry a seriously injured fellow officer and friend to safety.

He said: “The British soldiers were outnumbered seven-to-one at the First Battle of Ypres. For more than two weeks, they held the Germans at bay. Then at midday on October 31, 1914, the thinned ranks of exhausted men buckled and broke. The line would be restored two hours later by the heroic action of the Worcestershires at Gheluvelt.

“Despite the mortal danger, my great-uncle stayed behind to help his friend and was shot through the shoulder dragging him to safety. After the war, the wounded man – his commanding officer, Major Harold Cartwright – presented my great-uncle with a silver teapot as an expression of his gratitude.

“Apparently Ernest never talked about his wound, for the greatest shame for an Edwardian soldier was to be shot in the back. It implied he had been running away from the enemy. Yet the irony was that he had performed an extremely courageous act by risking his own life for a friend.

“This is a story of great fortitude, steadfast loyalty and remarkable courage in the face of overwhelming odds. The sacrifice of the small Army that left Britain in the hot summer of that fateful year has largely been forgotten now. But my account will hopefully help to put that right.”

Ernest Phillpott eventually died in 1929, at the age of 49, partly as a result of his war wounds. He left behind an old Kruger shilling, a silver teapot, and a host of long lost memories. From one Captain to another, it is a heck of a tale.

l The Shilling by John Phillpott is published as an e-book by Graficas Books, Cwmbach, Glasbury-on-Wye, Powys HR3 5LU telephone 01497 847894 or e-mail studio@graficas.co.uk

It is also available from Amazon.co.uk and can be downloaded using a Kindle, an iPad or similar devices.