A BLUE Badge guide has pieced together the wartime story of his courageous father.

Alfred Frederick Pride from Owermoigne was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal for capturing a German machine gun post during the First World War.

The medal is the second level military decoration given for bravery, second only to the Victoria Cross.

His son Derek Pride, from Dorchester, has put in hours of research to find out more about the heroics of his dad.

After becoming detached from his battalion, Lance Corporal Pride noticed an enemy machine gun which had been brought up unobserved to a position on the flank.

He and his fellow comrade crept up under heavy fire and machine gun fire and killed three of the crew and wounded one, and captured and held the gun in spite of repeated enemy attempts to recover it.

A newspaper report wrote: “The gallant act enabled the advance to continue and undoubtedly prevented many casualties.”

Alfred, one of nine children, was a keen sportsman who played football for Stoborough and cricket for Kingston Park.

He volunteered for the Dorsets on September 8, 1914, when the war was only a few weeks old.

Derek said: “My dad always told me that he went into Dorchester and joined up as a volunteer. When he returned home and told his father his remark was ‘you fool, what did you do that for?”

Alfred was in the Dorset Territorials as a private, continuing his normal job as a domestic gardener and would travel around Dorset towns on recruitment drives.

He was later transferred to the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry and went into active service in France.

Derek said his dad would talk a little about life on the front line.

“The things that they had to endure were horrendous.

“It’s absolutely amazing to think that someone can go through all that.

“It must have been horrendous.

“I remember him as being a faultless character and he was a really nice man.

“He was very modest and I think it’s fair to say that most people admired him and respected him.”

Remarkably, Alfred’s younger brother Leslie George Pride served in the Navy during the Second World War and was also awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal for bravery when serving on HMS Blankney.

Derek has also traced many of his father’s marching routes and the various trenches he was stationed in.

His dad was in the battles of the Somme, Ypres, Cambrai, Arras and Vimy Ridge.

Following the war Alfred took up work in London, where he acted as a decoy for the Suffragettes’ movement, one of many soldiers who would distract the police with their medals before the demonstrations started.

He then joined the Special Constabulary and was a Special Police Constable for more than 20 years and received the Tudor award.

He lived in Lower Bockhampton, near Dorchester, for 53 years, and worked as a sidesman at Stinsford Parish Church.

Before his retirement he worked at the Dorset College of Agriculture. He also worked for the Sir Cecil Hanbury estate as a carpenter.

Alfred is buried in the Sir Cecil Hanbury memorial Garden Cemetery in Stinsford. After he passed away in January 1974, Derek received a letter from the regimental headquarters of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry Office. It praised Alfred’s gallantry, his courage and bravery.

Derek said: “My dad was a very brave man. He would tell me things but one of the things was that he obviously suffered some sort of trauma because he used to have nightmares.

“The nightmares got worse and in one instance he knocked his hand against the wall and cut it and said ‘I was fighting the Germans’.”