FORMER soldier Geoff Williams and his wife, Jan, have turned their fascination with the Great War into a business. ANDY DAVEY reports on their new venture.

MILITARY history enthusiasts Geoff and Jan Williams have set up a business to help Wiltshire people retrace their forefathers' steps on the battlefields of the First World War.

Using diaries, photographs, letters or even just a name of a relative, the husband and wife time team will find when and where the veterans served and the battles in which they fought.

The Sutton Benger couple, who have a passion for seeking out remote First World War battlefield areas, will then organise and lead a tour of the trenches where the relative fought.

Mr Williams, 46, who was a staff officer in the Army for 26 years, says the venture, called Valiant Endeavours Ltd in tribute to the soldiers who fought and died in the trenches, will concentrate on the exploits of the Wiltshire Regiment.

"It's a fascinating period and is an important part of our history," said Mr Williams, who retired from the Army two years ago with the rank of captain.

"The battlefields are monuments to what our ancestors have done. Most people are simply unable to conceive how their relatives did what they did."

Mr Williams, who served all over the world, including Bosnia, Kosovo and in the Gulf War, said he has always had an interest in the First World War.

His great grandfather fought at the bloody battle of the Somme, in northern France, in 1916, with the West Yorkshire Regiment, and his wife's grandfather was a horse gunner at the same battle.

The couple have visited where their forefathers fought and arranged several tours of First World War battlefields in France for Mr Williams' colleagues in the military, when the idea was still just a hobby.

One of the couple's most exciting finds was when Mr Williams and his 45-year-old wife, who is a civil servant with the Ministry of Defence, decided to investigate an aerial photograph of a stretch of trench, which included the remains of a farm.

More than 80 years later, Mr Williams managed to pinpoint the area in the photograph, including the farm, and spoke to the present day farmer, who invited him to visit.

Mr and Mrs Williams discovered 100 metres of collapsed trench at the farm, with rolls of barbed wire at the bottom, which they identified as part of the Hindenburg Line, a mass of fortified positions in France the Germans withdrew to in 1916.

The Wiltshire Regiment, which has now been amalgamated into the Royal Gloucester, Wiltshire and Berkshire Regiment, had numerous battalions, which served in theatres across the world during the war.

The tours will focus on northern France and Belgium, where the bulk of Britain's armed forces and the battalions of the Wiltshire Regiment were concentrated.

But Mr Williams, who now works as a system's engineer, said the company also includes tours to Gallipoli, in Turkey, where the regiment's fifth battalion fought alongside soldiers from Australia and New Zealand.

"We want people to see that there is this part of France and Belgium, which in many ways is part of Britain," said Mr Williams, who has a son and a daughter. "I enjoy researching the history because I just like looking for things. It's just part of my personality, I'm naturally inquisitive."

The company also offers tours to the battlefields of Ypres, Cambrai or the Somme for people who wish to visit Great War sites out of personal curiosity.

For more information go to www.valiant-endeavours.co.uk or telephone (01249) 721379.