Nearly 50 of us, including 13 children, took part in the Trusham Remembrance Sunday service at the village war memorial. Children read out the names of those from our village who had died as a result of the two World Wars and put poppies with the men's names on them into a stand on the memorial.The memorial had extra decorations on it this year as we had put out an appeal for handmade poppies to decorate the chains along the front. A group of charity knitters who heard about this provided us with about 300 of which we’ve used many along the chains and in the church. Other villagers made their own using crochet, knitting or sewing with felt. These were put into a wreath. Some of them had even been made from wool from Helen Havill’s sheep which had been spun and dyed red for us by Anna Leatherdale - so a real local initiative and thanks to all our crafty contributors.We heard the story of Walter Tull, born to a British Mother and a Barbadian father and whose grandfather had been a slave in the Caribbean, who became only the third black professional footballer in the UK. He played for Spurs and Northampton Town and was signed to play for Rangers after the war.Early in WW1 Walter signed up for the Footballers' Battalion, the 17th Battalion of the Middlesex Regiment. He was a very capable soldier and was promoted three times before reaching the battlefield. At that time, Army law stated that anyone who was not of 'pure European descent' could not become an officer. But Walter was so commended by his commanding officer that he was made an officer - the first black combat officer, it is believed, in the British Army. He died during the Battle of the Somme in March 2018, lies in an unmarked grave in a field in France, but is remembered on the Arras Memorial, the same memorial where George Dolbear from Trusham is also remembered. Michael Morpurgo was inspired by Walter Tull's life to write his children's book 'A Medal for Leroy' which isn’t Walter's story but has some similarities.
