CHURCH members are going out of their way to remember the soldiers from its congregation who lost their lives during the First World War.

Andover United Reformed Church, in East Street, hopes to be able to find the relations of the men from the church who died during The Great War for a memorial event on Remembrance Sunday.

Elizabeth Calder has made it her mission to find the families of the men remembered on a plaque in the church and invite them to the memorial lunch she has been planning.

The 76-year-old said: “I’m hoping that this article will help the church be able to get in contact with the relatives.

“Even if I only get one, it’s something. Obviously I would like one from each [family] but I don’t think that’s possible.”

The idea came after Elizabeth attended a meeting of Andover Churches Together.

She added: “I thought about it, and then I went back to my church and I said ‘could we do something special?’

“ I thought, well we’ve got this plaque up and they are the men that were killed. Our church was then the Congregational Church and the Congregational Church and the Presbyterian Church joined together in 1973 and became the United Reformed Church, which has developed from then.

“Then I came up with this idea to make it a special commemorative thing, and they all liked that idea, that’s how it developed.

“It’s very special to our church because we’re actually trying very hard to remember these men. As you may notice, there are two men from the same family, that died.”

The church will be holding a Remembrance Day service on November 11 from 10.30am to 11am, with The Last Post played before the two minute’s silence, followed by the Reveille afterwards.

The remembrance lunch will then be held to mark the centenary of the end of the First World War. Elizabeth said: “I’m making soup, so we’ll have homemade vegetable soup.

“We are having round loaves, your English cobs, cut into four.

“We’re not having spread, because they didn’t have spread in those days. We’re having proper butter.

“We’re having a top table because in those days that’s how you did things and our elders and our minister will sit there and then everybody else will just sit facing them.”

Elizabeth also plans to make certificates for each of the men which she will present to the men’s relations or put into a remembrance book she will create for the church.

Elizabeth hopes the families of the men will “get in touch” and is “urging people to have a little look at the names and think, do these look familiar?”

The names of the men are:

n Albert Colin

n William George Drew

n Albert Ernest Dewdney

n Frederick Fidler

n Walter Reginald Glover

n Ernest Hendry Heath

n William Charles Heath

n Thomas William Heath

n William Jeffery

n Edward Charles Maton

n William Henry Rushent

n William Stevens

n Stanley E. Wells

More details on the above men will be published on the Andover Advertiser website. If you are a relation, contact rebecca.rayner@andoveradvertiser.co.uk.