DURING the outbreak of the Great War in 1914 a group of volunteers from Govilon signed up to fight for King and Country. They left the only home they’d ever known together via a horse-drawn carriage which departed from the village Post Office.

Waved goodbye by proud family and friends the local lads enlisted with "A" Company of the 3rd Battalion of the Monmouthshire Regiment.

Every corner in Britain no matter how quiet or remote had been touched by this terrible conflict. Govilon lost 12 of her youngest and best. They were killed in France, they were killed in Turkey and at least four of the lost their lives during the bloody Battle of Ypres. In that Belgium bloodbath, only 29 of the 500 men in ‘A’ and ‘D’ Company of the 3rd Mons who arrived in France on February 1915 survived.

A picture first printed in a 1979 edition of the Abergavenny Chronicle shows a handful of these volunteers, who in some cases, would never return home again.

The photo belonged to Govilon’s Mr Theo Hiley, who was a small boy when the volunteers departed.

Mr Hiley recalled, “So proud were some of the fathers that their sons were going off to the war that they were keen to get in the picture too.”

As far as Mr Hiley remembers, the three sitting at the front, are from the left, Sam Vaughan, Tom Lewis and Tom Smith. On the far right is Alf Morgan, and beside him a Mr Dobson.

Second on the left is Edgar Dobson, and two behind him is a Mr Barlett. Fifth from the left is a Mr Miller, beside him Ellis Dobson, and three along with the mustache is Ben Watkins.

Some of the names will be recognizable to many as they are now immortalized in stone on the Govilon War Memorial.