"AS we that are left grow old: age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn, at the going down of the sun and in the morning we will remember them."

These words, most commonly heard on Remembrance Day each November, affect everybody who has an iota of sensitivity, whether or not they have passed through a world war.

They are as meaningful to members of today's armed forces and their families and friends today as they are to the Old Companions who make their way ever more slowly to the Cenotaph each November 11.

Who remembers the soldier Giles Sykes, whose name appears on a brass plaque that originally graced Brook's Mill in Armitage Bridge?

Like our Cowcliffe Seventh Man, Mr Sykes, who died in the Great War of 1914-18 and was the 12th of 15 names on the plaque, is the only one about whom precious little is known.

Research in the official lists of war dead has failed to locate him.

Ten of the 15 were Armitage Bridge men, and they are commemorated in St Paul's Parish Church yard in the village.

The other five probably lived elsewhere - Berry Brow or Honley, perhaps.

Giles Sykes seems to have been a Honley man who worked in the mill until his war service.

We know he was 23 years old in 1901, so he came to war service relatively late in life.

He may have disappeared altogether but for the good offices of town jester Jake Mangelwurzel, who was delivering building materials to Storthes Hall in 1976 when he came across hundreds of war plaques that had been thrown on the scrapheap.

He was able to rescue about 35 of them.

"I'm sorry I couldn't rescue any more," he tells me.

"I don't know why they were throwing them away, or why there were there in the first place, but it seems a shame that no-one had any respect for the war dead."

Well, maybe we can remember and honour Giles Sykes by fleshing out his details.

It's worth a try.