A TEENAGE soldier has donned his great-grandfather's Victoria Cross for his passing out parade.

Private David Heaviside, 17, from Consett, successfully completed his combat infantryman's course at the Infantry Training Centre in Catterick Garrison, North Yorkshire.

For the ceremony, he wore the VC won more than 80 years ago by his ancestor. His great-grandfather was stretcher-bearer Private Michael Wilson Heaviside, of the Durham Light Infantry's 15th Battalion.

The soldier won his VC for saving a wounded soldier's life under heavy German gunfire on the Hindenburg Line, in France in May, 1917.

He crawled to within 40 yards of the enemy lines to take food and water to a man who had been trapped in a shell hole for 72 hours. Later that same night, he crept back with two colleagues and managed to rescue the man.

The Craghead miner, who was born the son of a grocer in Gilesgate, Durham, in October 1880, he returned to north-west Durham a hero and was presented with his VC by King George V at Buckingham Palace in July 1917.

He continued working as a miner after the war, fathered 15 children and died in April 1939 at his home in Craghead, near Stanley, aged 58.

In 1999, a new gravestone was erected in his memory and he also has a street named after him in Durham.

His great grandson plans to follow in his footsteps, by joining the Light Infantry 1st Battalion, presently stationed in Paderborn, Germany.