A WAR like no other before it, whose impact stretched across the world, is the subject of a new book launched in Milford Haven last week.

We Will Remember Them is the product of cross-generation working by members of the town's secondary school and Royal British Legion Branch.

This huge tome features hundreds of pages of research into the impact of the war on Pembrokeshire and its people.

Using archive information, pictures, newspaper clippings, illustrations and letters from the front, it paints a picture of how the conflict affected soldiers, their families, and their communities.

Launching the book at Milford Haven School, Anthony Williams of the Royal British Legion thanked all who had made it possible.

"At the beginning, information was difficult to come by, as many people when asked said they did not think they had any ancestors who were in the First World War," he said.

But, he continued, after some digging it emerged most did have a link, and the writing of the book prompted many to look deeper into their own family history.

"As we put together the information, it became very personal to us," he said.

"They were no longer names, we felt we knew them.

"We pass by the houses and cottages where they lived, and could say 'the man who lived there lost his leg at Gallipoli', the man who lived in that cottage survived after spending the war minesweeping in a trawler'."

He paid tribute to the women nursing at the front within range of enemy guns, or working in factories at home, the families struggling to survive after losing the breadwinner, and the women whose husbands returned from the front different men to those they had married.

Historian Dr Simon Hancock said he had been overwhelmed by the amount of work put into the book, which is raising funds for the school and the Legion's poppy appeal.

He said Pembrokeshire had an 'intimate connection' with the war, from local children watching airships flying overhead, to Milford Haven becoming a sanctuary for Belgian refugees.