In 1941, a chance encounter in a South Hams pub shone a light on the world’s first tank battle.

The meeting, over a pint of cider, reunited Modbury man Harry Meatherel with a poignant photograph. And now his grandson, John Rendle, who still lives in Modbury, has made two framed tributes to his grandad, which he showed off at the town’s Royal British Legion Club earlier this month.

The photo shows a derelict 45 ton British tank, lying astride Turkish trenches near Gaza, a tank that Harry drove into the first battle of Gaza in 1917.

John said: “When I grew up, I lived with my nan and granddad and they had the photo on the landing. My grandad would say it was so when he went to bed, he could see how lucky he was.

“Out of a crew of five, there were two survivors - one was blinded, my grandad was injured but he survived.”

John explained: “The troops were banned from taking cameras into action, but they used to hide cameras in biscuit tins and then bury them in the sand - that’s how they got the photos back!”

It would be 23 years before Harry saw the photograph, and only after an extraordinary coincidence in the Exeter Inn, as told by the Daily Mirror at the time.

“Harry Meatherel set his mug of cider on the bar of a Devonshire inn, and gazed wistfully at the picture he held. ‘That’s her,’ he said softly. ‘That’s her. She was a beauty before she was knocked about,’” the story read.

A few days before, Harry had been chatting to a stranger about mechanised warfare in the Western Desert. He explained that he drove in the first tank at the first battle of Gaza in 1917.

To which the stranger replied: “I saw you scramble out of that tank. I took a picture of her afterwards hoping I should meet you some day. The picture is at home. It’s yours.”

The stranger, Bert Cawsey was an infantry sergeant who went into attack alongside Harry’s tank, before ending up as the “jovial” landlord of the Exeter Inn.

But the story didn’t end there, with Harry later receiving a letter via the Daily Mirror, from a Californian man who had also taken part in the battle.

After the war, Harry worked as a chauffeur for the lady of Treveor House.

“There were only about two cars in Modbury in the 1920s,” John said.

He was in the Home Guard during the Second World War, and later was a coach driver for Stevens Tours, based in Modbury.

But while Harry was fortunate to survive, John explained that his uncle wasn’t so lucky. During the Second World War, his uncle worked at Modbury chemist’s, in a reserved occupation, before being enlisted to the RAF and sent to Burma

“He was out there when the Americans dropped the atom bombs and died of lung disease six months before my grandad - his lungs were black from the fallout from the bombs. So my gran lost her son and her husband within six months. I can remember all of this, because I was only 10 or 11 at the time.

“The wars brought a lot of sadness.”

John explained: “I’ve done this for myself and my family and as a memorial for my grandad. We want it as a permanent memorial in the Bovington Tank Museum in Dorset.

“Hopefully it’s something that hasn’t been seen. I’m going to present it to the museum in Bovington and hopefully they’ll bite my hand off to display it!”

“You hear so much about these tanks on the Western front - but never in other campaigns out in Palestine - I don’t know why. Harry would be pleased as punch to think this is happening!”