SO often the records of soldiers who fought and died in the First World War were lost.
Paperwork was often incomplete, haphazardly stored and much was lost during the Blitz in the Second World War.
One Redditch soldier about whom little is known was Alfred J Clarke.
He is remembered on the St Stephen’s War Memorial but even here there is confusion as there were two Alfred J Clarkes from Redditch who fought in the Great War.
What is known is that one of them died of his wounds in Belgium on January 10, 1918, 100 years ago on Wednesday.
He served in the Devonshire Regiment and with the Labour Corps.
Labour Corps men were frequently looked down upon and if they died in combat they were remembered under the name of their regiment, which makes tracing their whereabouts near impossible.
However they played a vital part in the war effort, building roads, digging trenches, clearing ground, putting up telegraph poles to name a few tasks.
Even then, and despite more than 700,000 men working for the Labour Corps, many from the far flung corners of the empire, there was never sufficient manpower for the demand.
Formed in January 1917, the Corps was often made up of the remnants of broken up battalions and returning wounded soldiers rated as unfit for frontline service.
Despite this they frequently worked within range of the enemy guns.
It is not known how Alfred Clarke died, but he was serving in Flanders, site of the bloody Battle of Passchendaele in the autumn of 1917.
Although no major attacks happened over the winter months, patrols and raids would have been constant and it is likely Private Clarke was wounded in an enemy artillery strike and subsequently passed away.
With thanks to Remembering Redditch’s Fallen Heroes and www.longlongtrail.co.uk/
