The Forgotten Soldier: He wasn’t a soldier, he was just a boy
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But this is not just his story; it is the story of all the young forgotten soldiers who fought and bravely died for their country
The Forgotten Soldier tells the story of Private Edward Connelly, aged 19, killed in the First World War a week before the Armistice and immediately forgotten, even, it seems, by his own family.
Edward died on exactly the same day, and as part of the same military offensive, as Wilfred Owen. They died only a few miles apart and yet there cannot be a bigger contrast between their legacies. Edward had been born into poverty in west London on the eve of the twentieth century, had a job washing railway carriages, was conscripted into the army at the age of eighteen and sent to the Western Front from where he would never return.
He lies buried miles from home in a small military cemetery on the outskirts of an obscure town close to the French border in western Belgium. No-one has ever visited him.
Like thousands of other young boys, Edward’s life and death were forgotten.
By delving into and uncovering letters, poems and war diaries to reconstruct his great uncle’s brief life and needless death; Charlie fills in the blanks of Edward’s life with the experiences of similar young men giving a voice to the voiceless. Edward Connelly’s tragic story comes to represent all the young men who went off to the Great War and never came home.
This is a book about the unsung heroes, the ordinary men who did their duty with utmost courage, and who deserve to be remembered.
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Charlie Connelly is the bestselling author of Attention All Shipping. He lives in London.
