An Abergavenny family laid a wreath at their late father’s grave to commemorate his experience fighting at one of first World War’s most harrowing battles.

Private Morris Llewellyn ran off from his Abergavenny home at the outbreak of the Great War, making it to France before being sent back by military chiefs as he was just 15-years-old.

Undeterred, Private Llewellyn waited until his 16th birthday before again crossing the Channel to join the war effort.

His daughter, Mary Seed, 87, and brothers Barrie, 65, and David, 73, commemorated their father’s brave endeavours fighting at the Battle of Passchendaele in 1917, in what was one of the defining, and bloodiest conflicts of World War I.

“He ran away to join the war, before being found and sent home from France. He was only 15. They sent him back to Abergavenny, and he went back out there once he’d turned 16. From there, he stayed in the army with the Royal Leicester Regiment, and was still in service in India throughout the 1920s,” said daughter, Mary.

The courage and bravery of those who fought in one of the bloodiest battles of the Great War has been remembered across the country, in ceremonies marking 100 years since the battle also known as the third battle of Ypres.

In the three months of brutal fighting, half a million Allied and German soldiers died, wounded or reported missing, including 3,000 Welsh soldiers who were killed.

• Mary, Barrie and David at the grave of their father Morris Llewellyn.