John Pringle has begun a huge task - paying respects to the men who gave their lives on the battlefield during the First World War. Jim McTaggart reports.

As John Pringle gazed at the names of 125 men on his town's war memorial, he set himself a mammoth task - to find out where all of them died and were buried.

Now, after nearly three years of hard work, he has visited and photographed the resting places of 62 of the First World War soldiers, mostly in France, and will soon go to another 40 graves in Belgium.

The 46-year-old delivery driver has devoted nearly all his spare time to the project since hitting on the idea while studying the memorial in the grounds of the Bowes Museum, at Barnard Castle, County Durham.

He has researched the background of many of the troops and built up a big dossier showing their parents' names, home addresses, regiments, and the battles in which they were killed.

Mr Pringle said yesterday: "I felt that unless someone recorded the facts now, it would become more difficult, or even impossible, as time went by. I mean to go on until I find out about the whole 125."

He has talked to relatives, searched newspaper files and official records, trawled the Internet and listened to a casualties' CD to compile the story of the town's young men who went to war and did not return.

Many were in the Durham Light Infantry (DLI) but some transferred to other units.

The most tragic mother was Margaret Smith, of Bridgegate, Barnard Castle, who had five of her six sons killed. Mr Pringle has been to the graves of two of them, Alfred and Robert. He has traced the resting places of two more, Fred and George. But he has more research to do on the fifth son, J T Smith.

His longest trip so far has been to the grave of Robert Young, who is buried at Rheims, further south than any of the others in France. Two of the town's men, Ralph Hebdon and Norman Walker, lie near each other at Bapaume, where both were killed on November 5, 1916, in an assault on Butte.

There are several instances of brothers killed. Fred Ashmore, 21, is buried at Vailly sur Marne. Mr Pringle has visited his grave and will soon visit that of his brother, Joseph, 25, in Belgium.

Thomas Mulgrew, 19, was killed on July 1, 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme, when 20,000 British men died. Mr Pringle is going there this year, on the anniversary, for a service starting at 7.30am, the time the ill-fated action began.

On the Thiepval Memorial in the Somme valley, which honours the 70,000 men who died but have no individual graves, he found the names of 14 Barnard Castle men, including one of the oldest casualties, John Rodgers, 38.

In the Etaples war cemetery in Northern France, which suffered graffiti during the Iraq crisis this year, there is one man from the town, Alfred Coates, among the 10,776 British graves.

Three men who were shipped home before dying of wounds - Norris Okey, Bert Dodds and Thomas Robson - are buried in or close to Barnard Castle. But several are far away, in Turkey.

The memorial also has a marble plaque to a smaller number of men killed during the Second World War, but Mr Pringle has not researched them as yet.

"The 1914-18 men are taking all my time," he said. "It is more difficult now as I've found no trace as yet of some of the remaining names. But I won't give up."

He is inviting relatives of any of the men to contact him on (01833) 637801, so they can exchange details and photographs. He hopes to publish a book one day as a tribute to all the men, but feels it might take a few more years of work.

Mr Pringle became interested after seeing the name of a relative, John Alexander Pringle, 19, who was killed in France in 1918, on the war memorial in Morpeth, Northumberland. He visited his grave in France. Then he called at the Barnard Castle memorial, and his great project began.