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At just 5ft 6ins, unassuming Frederick Barter was at first rejected by the army because of his slight build.

But by the end of World War One the soldier was famed as one of Britain’s most fearsome warriors – and among one of the first in the campaign to receive the Victoria Cross.

Sergeant Major Barter was given the award after he and eight volunteers stormed through the trenches in the Battle of Festubert hurling grenades at any Germans they came across. They captured 105 men and 500 of the 4,000 yards won in the battle before its end on May 24.

Writer Alister Williams visited the site of the action as he was researching his book Heart of a Dragon – The VCs of Wales and the Welsh Regiments.

“Barter himself discovered and cut 11 mine leads, situated about 20 yards apart, which were intended to blow up the trench should it fall into British hands,” he said.

“During the course of this frenzied attack, Private Thomas Hardy was badly wounded in the right shoulder when about 10 yards from the German trench.”

Barter ordered him back.

But Hardy said: “It’s all right – I’m left handed!”

Private Hardy rushed forward and hurled grenades at the enemy.

Barter became suspicious of Hardy’s military prowess.

Quizzed, Hardy revealed he was actually Captain Hugh Sale Smart of the 53 Sikhs.

“He had deserted his regiment and joined up as a private in order to avoid being sent back to India and possibly missing the chance of action,” Alister said.

He died after he was shot in the head 20 yards on from his comrade telling him to turn back.

By the end of that day Barter’s battalion had suffered hundreds of casualties. Of 831 men, 253 were left.

In a letter he later sent to his sister he wrote: “It was very hard fighting out here for two days. My word we gave the Germans some stick.

“I am afraid I may have been guilty of knocking a few of them and I hope to knock a few more still.

“There has been some heavy fighting. I have been in the thick of it again, and came out without a scratch.”

On June 29 the award of a VC to Barter was announced in the London Gazette. His citation credited him with “most conspicuous bravery.”

On July 2 he returned to Cardiff to a hero’s welcome. Hundreds lined the streets to see him.

He received his VC from King George V on July 12, 1915. While back in Britain he was made a second lieutenant. He was a captain by the end of the war.

Beryl McCarthy’s father was Fred Barter’s cousin. The 71 year old was in awe of his actions during WWI.

“It’s absolutely amazing what he did and very brave,” she said.

Her mum had told her “little things” about her relative.

“I just think, ‘How did he get the courage to do it under the conditions?’”

Beryl thought in some photos the hero looked tired.

“He looks war torn I suppose,” she said at her Caerphilly home.

“You see old photos of the men together all smiling but you can see that there is something shattered.

“It’s all for the camera. Not many people had cameras so the pictures would have been for propaganda.”

Some of Frederick’s actions could have been down to “absolute terror”.

“But then I think what he did was quite planned,” she said.

“I don’t think it was just a one off thing.”

It wasn’t. Frederick also received the Military Cross, the 1914 Star, the British War Medal, the Victory Medal, Coronation medals in 1937 and 1953 and the Russian Order of St George medal.

Beryl has never seen his VC. It was “kept safe somewhere” when she was a child.

“I would love to see the medal, to think that it was given to him and pinned onto him.”

Now it is held at the Royal Welch Fusiliers Museum, in Caernarfon Castle.

While streets have been named after him in Wrexham – where the regiment was based – there is nothing in his home town of Cardiff to commemorate him.

“What we have got to do is put up a fitting memorial for the lives that were lost, and for the men that had a VC given them, in Cardiff itself,” Beryl said.

The call comes as next year’s WW1 centenary approaches.

Cardiff council were unable to say whether a memorial would be possible, though an insider at the authority called him “deserving”.

Alister said: “The man who was feted as Cardiff’s first Victoria Cross recipient of the Great War is now all but forgotten in the city of his birth.”

By the 1950s Frederick was back living in Cardiff. He died of heart failure on a visit to Bournemouth in 1953. He was 61.