BELL ringers paid tribute to one of their own killed on the Western Front.

Christ Church’s band rang a peal lasting almost three-and-a-half hours on Saturday night ahead of a special event to mark Swindon’s fallen First World War heroes and the families they left behind.

Tower secretary Brian Harris paid tribute to one of the bell ringers’ own, killed at the Battle of Messines in June 1917.

John Henry Odey began ringing bells at Christ Church in 1912, when the upholsterer moved from Bath with his wife and two children.

The bells tower at Christ Church

Brian said: “Tower records show his exemplary attendance until September 18, 1916, when the register notes poignantly: ‘Left on His Majesty’s Service.’”

On hearing of John’s death in 1917, his old mates at Christ Church rang the bells half-muffled as a final mark of respect. An obituary in bell ringers’ newspaper The Ringing World said the Stanley Street man’s “unassuming disposition made him very popular”.

John Odey and his family

Brian added: “His name lives on among the 54,000 others all with no known grave on the Menin Gate at Ypres.”

Fellow bell ringer Mike Palmer, steeple keeper, reflected: “Those people went off to war thinking it was all going to be over very quickly. When they got the Front it was horrific, but they still battled on.”

The Christ Church event also heard the story of William “Harry” Thomas, the son of Swindon pub owner Henry.

Born in 1888, Harry died a year short of his 30th birthday after he was wounded at Arras in 1917.

The talented artist could have dodged the army call-up on health grounds. But a painful hernia operation saw him being declared fit for duty in 1915 and sent off to France as a gunner.

Stoical Harry’s letters home tell of soldiers battling terrible conditions – as well as German bombardments: “I have not had a change of clothes for weeks, nor a wash or shave for days and my feet have been wet for a week, but I am not especially uncomfortable in spite of it all.”

Harry was the only son of Swindon pub owner Henry Thomas, who at the turn of the 20th century bailed out struggling Swindon Town Football Club.

Harry's bell in Christ Church

After the war, grieving Henry paid for his son’s name to be added to the second of Christ Church’s ring of 10 bells. The wealthy businessman was a member of the Old Town committee that organised for the church’s bells to be recast in 1924.