ETAPLES is the second biggest war graves cemetery in Europe, with more than 10,000 interments.

It sits on the site of the military complex that sprawled across this part of northern France in 1917.

The Romans knew this place and Napoleon used the coastal sand dunes as a training area for his cavalry.

But today, it is a place of pilgrimage for Mark and Gillian Shepherd of Bromsgrove, who are visiting the last resting place of Mark’s grandfather, Sapper Theodore George Sheppard, a member of the Royal Engineers.

He died from wounds on March 31, 1918.

Mark said: “He had been wounded before but asked to return to the front. But a second wound proved fatal and he was brought to Etaples where he died.”

Mark is a direct descendant of the notorious 18th century Midlands highwayman and prison escapologist John ‘Jack’ Sheppard.

ÅCHRIS and Sue Pate of Hallow, near Worcester, are no strangers to the former Western Front.

Chris is a Freeman of Chester and has been researching members of the order who were killed in the First World War.

At Ecoivres cemetery, near Arras, he finds the graves of two privates of the Cheshire Regiment. Chris is compiling a book of Freemen that he hopes to publish in the near future. Like the Sheppards, the Pates have been exploring northern France and Flanders for several years now.