MORE light has been shed on an iconic First World War photograph showing Kendal Pals in a captured German dugout.

The image, featured in the first of The Westmorland Gazette’s Great War centenary supplements in July, shows five soldiers resting in a trench captured from the enemy during the bloody Somme offensive.

After seeing the picture, Sylvia Nichol of Over Kellet, identified her father, Norman Park, as the sergeant on the far left. He survived the war, but was invalided out after being gassed.

MORE TOP STORIES: Now relatives of two other soldiers have contacted the Gazette to offer more information about the photograph, used by the Government as a morale boosting poster and postcard.

Yvonne Bolton of Kirkbarrow, Kendal, reveals her grandfather Ernest Carradus is the soldier wearing the tin helmet while Thomas Harrison, of Dallam, says his father, John James Harrison, is the man sitting immediately to the right of Sgt Park. Both men survived the war.

Mrs Bolton said: “My grandfather was a very quiet man. He didn’t talk about the war, but he did make a comment about the photograph – that he wished he’d have taken his helmet off!”

She said her grand-father, who worked as a shoemaker at K Shoes, died in 1948, aged 56.

Mr Harrison said his father, who worked for Carlisle Corporation and died in 1970, came across the photograph when it was featured in a special Daily Herald supplement 20 years after the Great War ended. Amateur Kendal historian and former Gazette photo-grapher Paul Bramham has also taken an interest in the photograph.

“The photo was a postcard from a series taken by Daily Mail photographers. It was taken of the 8th Battalion, The Border Regiment – known as The Kendal Pals – at Ovillers on July 15, 1916, in a captured German trench. There is a hand-coloured postcard, too, of the same trench, taken moments later.”

Mr Bramham added: “As a former press photographer, I can app-reciate the bravery of these unarmed war photographers carrying bulky camera equipment.

“The photo clearly demonstrates that the photographer must have been standing on top of the the trench looking down onto the soldiers sheltering there.”