Most people will pass the familiar landmark of Memorial Gardens in Penycae without casting a second glance at the list of the fallen from two world wars.

Not so Barry Jones for whom the Hall Street memorial – a marbled soldier head bowed standing proudly flanked by bright red Ruabon brick – has become a life-consuming passion for the last seven years.

Raised in Penycae, London exile Barry became fascinated with the tale of the young men who gave their lives for Queen and country after spotting the name of his great-uncle, Norman Howell, engraved among the war dead.

Few homes in Penycae were unaffected by the conflict in both wars. But what amazed Barry was how little was known about the men on the memorial.

While the theme of death, pain and sorrow are woven into his narrative, it is a passion for recording the details of a small community at war that drove Barry’s “labour of love”, his book “The Lost Sons of Penycae”.

“My mother told me her uncle was on the war memorial. He was 19 and he had been in France for only six weeks with the South Wales Borderers but he was listed as “no known grave”.

“I took my son to see his name on the Ploegsteert Memorial in Belgium. It was among 11,000, but to my shame I had never heard of it,” admitted Barry.

“There were hundreds of Welsh names on it, so I started to investigate all the names of the lads from Penycae who had been lost.

“I knew my grandfather, (Royal Welsh Fusilier William E Jones) who had survived the war, and I found his records and then I started looking at the others. From such a small community, 37 dead out of a village of 3,500 meant everyone knew someone who had died.”

The final year of the First World War was the bloodiest with 13 men from Penycae losing their lives, among them Private Howell.

Barry’s determination to delve into their lives unearthed individual and poignant stories which he hopes will trigger a wave of interest in the village.

His research took him as far as Gallipoli in Turkey, while he was fortunate the National Archive at Kew is not far from his Bromley home as he spent countless hours researching and cross checking facts in its military records as well as at the Wrexham County Borough Museum on journeys north.

He immersed himself in local newspapers. The now defunct Rhos Herald records how Penycae’s war memorial was unveiled on Saturday, July 11, 1925 to great fanfare.

Villagers, still shocked by their losses seven years after the war ended, contributed £750 to the epitaph and formed a procession led by the Ruabon Silver band.

Among the relatives holding wreaths were those from a little girl whose father had been killed and a 90-year-old lady who had lost two of her grandsons.

During the First World War the concept of the “thankful village” emerged; those villages where the men who went off to war returned to loved ones. But there were only three in Wales and Penycae was not among them.

The Somme took the lives of four Penycae men in the first two months of the battle.

“There was one boy, George Rowley, who was killed on his 21st birthday,” noted Barry. “Because many of the men were called Jones and Williams it was difficult to track their records, but I was determined to get to know their stories.”

Some of those that emerged proved heart rendering and give weight to the senselessness of the slaughter fields of World War One.

“In a field of strong competition, the saddest is that of John Edward Valentine, who lived at Stryt Issa in Penycae,” recalled Barry.

“He was killed less than a month before the war ended and had been in France for just four weeks. His brother was conscripted after a “comb-out” of the pits, but he volunteered to go instead.”

The final year of the war was the bloodiest as far as Penycae was concerned with 13 men losing their lives.

“Jonathon Roberts died on November 5 and his parents didn’t find out until after the Armistice, he was the last casualty.

“Artillery killed loads of men, they were literally blown to pieces. The early stages of the war where they went out as PALS battalions like G Company of the 4th battalion Royal Welch, packed with Rhos and Penycae men, were even worse as there was a high likelihood small communities would suffer lots of casualties.”

But amid the killings and horror of war there was victory too. The 24th battalion Royal Welch Fusiliers marched into Jerusalem in December 1917 to form part of the first Christian guard since the Crusades as the Prime Minister David Lloyd-George was keen to have a Welsh army conquer the Holy Land.

As a consequence of that campaign three Penycae men are buried in the Middle East and Barry uncovered graves and memorials for the village’s soldiers across the globe.

“I went to Gallipoli in Turkey and three times to France and Belgium. For most of these boys their chances of going to Salonika in Greece and Baghdad living in Penycae in 1914 were nil, but this was war.

“From this distance in time it is just difficult to grasp just how great the changes were.”

Unlike his great uncle, Barry’s grandfather came home in 1918, although he suffered the effects of being gassed.

“That is why I didn’t want it be just about those who were killed, but also about the wounded as well. Many soldiers were “home wounded”, but it wasn’t widely reported. In August 1916 around 150 wounded Somme casualties arrived on board a Red Cross train at Wrexham General.”

Eight victims of the Second World War are also included on the Penycae memorial, so Barry extended his research to include their stories too.

He hopes his book will generate feedback from relatives and is staging a question and answer session and slideshow in the village on September 4 or 5. There is also a reading at the London Welsh Centre on Wednesday, July 19.