HONOURING the town’s servicemen who fought in the Second World War is at the heart of a brand-new book that officially launched on Saturday.

Years of painstaking work has been put into the Roll of Honour by the Swindon Libraries’ Local Studies team to produce the book, detailing the number of people who lost their lives, prisoners of war and those who received gallantry medals.

The long journey to writing book started four and a half years ago when the team discovered that although Swindon, like many towns, has a Roll of Honour for those who died in the First World War, nothing was ever commissioned locally after 1945.

On Saturday, staff were able to proudly show off their efforts including Katherine Cole, Local Studies officer, who has been the driving force behind the project.

“I have enjoyed doing it because it needed to be done,” she said.

“I feel very privileged to have been able to do this because no list was taken after the Second World War.

“There are so few survivors and I am not aware of anyone locally who might still be alive. I have, however, been in contact with younger brothers of soldiers who served and one came in which was quite moving to hear what it was like for them as a family.

“We needed to do this now because that generation won’t be with us for that much longer and all these names needed to be taken and published.”

The information was gathered by trawling through old Adver newspaper archives, parish magazines and local history books.

From that, the team discovered hundreds of stories about soldiers and their lives including how nine sets of brothers fought in the war.

The book honours the 623 servicemen who gave their lives, five of which were women, the 221 prisoners of war and 137 soldiers who were in receipt of gallantry awards or medals.

The age range of servicemen from the town was 17 to 57.

Katherine added: “I have had quite a lot of interest in the book and after I had the piece in the paper a couple of weeks ago, I had a lot of responses from family members with photos and other stories of what it was like having a prisoner of war come back home.

“It has been very emotional and I had one gentleman on the phone to me talking about his experience and he went out of his way to come in to shake my hand to say thank you. I felt so privileged by that because he felt that his brother was being recognised.”

The book is available to buy and is also on loan at the town’s libraries. For more information, contact the Local Studies team by visiting them at the Central Library or emailing localstudies@swindon.gov.uk.