Trinidadian Alfred Hubert Mendes is the inspiration for the World War 1 film 1917 for which his grandson Sam Mendes won the award for best director at the  Golden Globes ceremony on Sunday night, along with the Best Picture, Drama Trophy.

He dedicated the award to his grandfather’s memory.

“He signed up for the First World War, he was age 17. I hope he’s looking down on us,” Mendes said in his acceptance speech “and I fervently hope that it never, ever happens again.”

The film was also nominated for Best Original Score. It is the story of two young British soldiers who are given an impossible mission—to deliver a message deep in enemy territory, thereby saving 1600 lives.

Alfred Hubert Mendes was born in Trinidad in 1897. ‘Alfy,’ as he was called by family and friends, was the ‘eldest of six children in a rising Portuguese Creole family,’  it is written in the Autobiography of Alfred H Mendes, 1897-1991.

He attended private schools in Trinidad until he was 15 years old and then attended a boarding school in Hertfordshire, England.

After World War I broke out July 28, 1914, he returned home briefly the next year. But he enlisted to fight against his father’s wishes. By late 1915, he was part of the King’s Royal Rifles. He was sent to fight in France the next year and then in Flanders. After the war, Alfred moved to Barbados, became a civil servant, wrote socialist novels and died in 1991, aged 94. ( Photos Francois Duhamel AP)