Bringing Uncle Albert Home

A Soldier's Tale

David P Whithorn

• Publisher: Sutton
• Year: 2006
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9780752479972
• Subtopic: World War I
• Index: History

Private Albert Turley was just an ordinary British soldier of the First World War. He died on the Somme for King and Country. He didn't win any medals for gallantry and has no known grave. Like thousands more soldiers whose names fill local war memorials the length of the country, he left neither letters nor diaries from which to reconstruct his story. This book describes one man's search for the story of his distant relative, describing Private Turley's active service with the 3rd Battalion, the Worcestershire Regiment that led to his death in one of the most infamous battles of the twentieth century. David Whithorn's painstaking reconstruction of Albert's story from surviving records and histories led to a pilgrimage following his footsteps to the Somme hillside where he fell in August 1916. What sets this book apart from the many others written about the soldiers and campaigns of the First World War is its dual function as both tightly focussed history of the 3rd Worcestershire and a detective story that eventually reveals what happened to Private Albert Turley.

Table of contents

• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction to the New Edition
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Fragments from France
• 2. The Birthday Surprise
• 3. Reconstructing the Past
• 4. Soldiers’ Tales
• 5. ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of Death . . .’
• 6. A Needle in the Haystack
• 7. A Pilgrimage to the Somme
• Epilogue
• Appendix: Roll of Honour
• Bibliography and Further Reading