FASHIONED carefully from an artillery shell and polished to perfection it is a memento of one man’s war.

Ernest Turtle was a young corporal in the Royal Engineers in the killing fields of northern France during the First World War when he picked up a case of a shell, one of many that had been raining down on British troops just days before.

Instead of flinging it aside he used it in his hobby – trench art.

Daily Echo:

Ernest Turtle in the 1930s

This was a common pastime among troops and often they depicted the war around them.

Using the shell, some bullet cases and the sparse set of tools available, Ernest made a guard house.

For unknown reasons it then ended up in a library in Epsom, Surrey.

For the past ten years a local history group has been trying to hunt down relatives of Ernest so as to bequeath them the memento.

Now, as the world commemorates 100 years since the start of the First World War, this classic example of trench art has been handed to Ernest’s son, Ronald, 83, from Bishopstoke.

He said: “I was amazed because it was something from my dad’s past. It was emotional and I got all welled up.

“He never talked much about the war, he did not want to.

“But I remember he made a big electric lamp out of a big shell case. After the war he was always making things.”

A plaque on the side of the artwork gives a clue as to how it was made.

It reads: “France 1915 to 1919, by Corporal E.L. Turtle R.E. No 135168, made with crude tools while on active service in France; in leisure time, from a shell case which held a German 18 inch naval shell used in the bombardment of Aire, July 1918.

Ernest was badly wounded in his back by a large slither of shrapnel but survived the war to become a steward aboard ocean liners based in Southampton. He died in 1952.