AMONG the names of Furness soldiers whose lives were lost in the First World War a century ago was Dalton’s Herbert Edwin Snell.

His life was not lost to bullets, shells or poison gas but to tropical disease of malaria.

Pte Snell had been serving in the East African Campaign against Germany.

His parents lived at 42 Cobden Street, Dalton and before the war Pte Snell worked at Kimberly and the Rand Mines in South Africa.

An article in the Barrow News on January 20 in 1917 noted: “When the war started he joined up and has seen some exciting times.”

He died, aged 26, of cerebral malaria on January 12 and had been in Africa for almost six years.

Pte Snell served with the 12th Regiment of the South African Infantry for service against Germany colonies.

On letters to Dalton he talked about the hardships the soldiers had suffered, including a march of almost 190 miles.

In 1901 Pte Snell had been living at Queen Street, Dalton, with his mother Elizabeth and his father Frederick, an iron ore miner.

By the time of the 1911 census the family was in Cobden Street and Herbert, then 20, was an iron ore miner.

Pte Snell is buried at Dodoma Cemetery in what is now Tanzania.