DARTMOUTH man Mike Rowley has been sharing precious family memorabilia that has been on show as part of a moving commemoration of the First World War. Mr Rowley's grandfather was killed in the bloody conflict just four days after arriving on the front, leaving behind a wife and two young children. Medals, awarded posthumously, which were delivered to his widow Elizabeth after the war have been on display along with other wartime artefacts in Saviour's Church, Dartmouth. Mr Rowley said he treasured the items that belonged to his grandfather, whose body was never found and whose name is on the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing in Ypres, Belgium. Private John Josiah Rowley, of the 1st Battalion Royal Warwickshire Regimen, died on May 9, 1915, during the second battle for Ypres, at the age of 32.He had arrived in Belgium a week earlier. His medals – which are in mint condition and have never been worn – include the 1914-15 Star, the Victoria Medal and the British War Medal, irreverently known as Pip, Squeak and Wilfred. Others items on display belonging to Pte Rowley included a memorial plaque and commemorative scroll, an embroidered leather belt and a service hymnal. Adding to the Rowley collection was a porthole from hospital ship Rewa, which was hit and sunk by a torpedo from a German U-boat off Hartland Point on January 4, 1918. The steamship vessel, originally built for the British-India Steam Navigation Company, was requisitioned for use as a British hospital ship during the First World War. She was returning to Britain from Malta with 279 wounded officers on board when she was hit. She took two hours to sink, allowing all wounded and ship's crew to board lifeboats, except for the four enginemen who died in the initial explosion. The attack caused outrage in Britain. The German high command denied sinking the ship, instead blaming the explosion on a loose British mine. More than 90 years later, Mike Rowley, an experienced diver, found the ship's window on the wreck off Padstow in 2009. Because of the depth of 62 metres, he had to use a mixture of oxygen, helium and nitrogen for breathing gas on the dive and found the porthole unattached on the deck. 'In situ it would have had a thick glass in it and a steel deadlight [internal cover] for keeping out the light or for use during bad weather,' he said. 'The steel deadlight has long since rusted away.'