Senior rating Steve Rogers has taken on a task for future generations by helping to honour Britain’s war dead.

The warrant officer is looking for help in photographing every official war grave in Hampshire for a national memorial project.

Steve, who serves on the staff of the Portsmouth Flotilla, became interested in war graves when research into family history led him to a military cemetery in Belgium.

He found his ancestor – and four more men with the same surname in a small battlefield cemetery in Flanders.

That inspired him to take on the mammoth task of recording the grave of every single Rogers killed in the Great War, and to date he has visited the resting places of 900 Rogerses – although there are still another 300 to go.

His work with war graves around the globe prompted bosses at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) to ask the senior rating to help record all gravestones in his native Hampshire for a major national project of remembrance.

Official records show there are 6,000 war graves in the county from 20th century conflicts, as well as Servicemen who died in peacetime accidents.

The warrant officer is about ten per cent of his way through the project – he has captured most of the graves in the Portsmouth area on camera – but is looking for volunteers to photograph the other stones on his definitive list from the CWGC.

The end result will be a website – www.britishwargraves.org.uk – honouring Britain’s war dead.

“This is my way of saying ‘Thank you’. I have taken quite a few RN personnel on tours of the Somme and they have always come back changed people,” Steve said.

“The photographic project is huge, but if we do not remember these people it’s bad news.”

Anyone in the Hampshire area who wishes to help the graves project should call Steve on 023 9272 0629. Photographs must be taken digitally.