When Julian Pollard and Sandy Ruddock met six years ago, they had no idea that they were rekindling a bond forged between their families a century before.

East Anglian Daily Times: Tom PollardTom Pollard (Image: Archant)

But Sandy’s great-uncle, Lt. Percy Watson, and Julian’s grandfather, 2nd Lt. Thomas Pollard, had in fact fought together and been wounded in the same campaign in Cambrai, of the First World War.

Now husband and wife as well as co-owners of Scarlett & Mustard dressings and marinades company, Julian and Sandy have created a special issue poppy seed dressing to commemorate the sacrifice their relatives made.

The Colonel’s Poppy Seed Dressing, created from Scarlett & Mustard’s base in Earl Soham, was on display at the Suffolk Show. For every sale of the dressing, £1 will be donated to the Royal British Legion.

Sandy said: “Julian and I met online six years ago and we lived in completely different parts of the country, I was in Hampshire and he was in Suffolk.

“Shortly after we met he was chatting to my father, and my father asked, ‘what do you do?’ And he said he used to be in the army. My father said well that’s interesting because my father was in the army as well.

“They got chatting about that and they discovered that Julian’s family were in the Royal Leicesters and so had my grandfather been. So we did a bit more digging because we thought that was an amazing coincidence.

“We looked up pages of the war records and we discovered that not only were they in the same regiment, they were in the same battalion, and they had fought together and been injured in the same campaign in 1917, it’s just incredible.”