FIVE former school friends are leaving the North-East for France this week to pay tribute to the soldiers who did not live to see peace.

The friends, all from County Durham, bought and restored an old minibus for their three-times-a-year pilgrimages to the battlefields of the First and Second World War.

Terry Dunn, from Tow Law, Malcolm Anderson, from Durham, Colin Mace, from Esh, and David Jolly, from Bowburn, regularly visit the wartime cemeteries of Northern France, Germany, Luxembourg and Belgium, often tracing graves for families who lost loved ones.

Mr Dunn said: "It can be an emotional journey. There is a tragic story behind every grave, especially as some of the soldiers were just boys.

"They are very peaceful places. We go off the beaten track and sometimes we have to walk for an hour to reach them. People ask us to find graves of relatives and we feel it is a great service.

"We take pictures of the headstone and it means a lot to families, especially when they have not known where the men were buried.

"We have been friends since we were at school. We meet up for a drink in Durham on Friday nights and eventually realised we all had the same interest in the battlefields."

This week, the men are heading for Etaples in France, to find the gravestone of Crook soldier Tom Dowson, who was killed in the First World War. Mr Dowson's 79-year-old nephew, who has the same name, traced the grave through a Commonwealth Commission website.