KEIGHLEY soldier Sam Lowndes was posted to Egypt after enlisting in 1915 while his mid-20s.

A safer posting than Europe, and certainly a far cry from the cold, wet, muddy trenches of the Western Front.

But in March 2016 the army moved this former machine painter out of the desert and sent him to join the thousands of other British troops in France.

And on July 1, like thousands of others, Lance Corporal Lowndes was killed on the opening day of the Battle of the Somme.

Sam was a member of the Bradford Pals Regiment, which was decimated during the first day of the famous, bloody battle.

Sam had been born in Holmfirth in 1888, moving to Keighley with his parents and seven siblings in the late 1890s.

By the age of 12 he was worsted spinner, and a decade later he was a wringing machine painter at Messrs Summerscales Ltd of Coney Lane.

Later in July 1916 Sam’s father Charles, then living in Parkwood, received a letter from 2nd Lieutenant Stephens informing him of Sam’s death

The officer said: “He was in my platoon, and give every satisfaction musings work. The platoon has lost a good soldier and a popular comrade.”