Walter Tull

Walter Tull served in the first world war as a second lieutenant and died during the second Battle of the Somme. Photograph: Westminster city council/PA Photos Walter Tull served in the first world war as a second lieutenant and died during the second Battle of the Somme. Photograph: Westminster city council/PA Photos A historian believes he may have uncovered clues about where Britain’s first black army officer was laid to rest. As well as being one of the most celebrated black British soldiers of the war, Tull was also one of the first black professional football players in England, playing for Tottenham Hotspur and later Northampton Town while overcoming racial discrimination. Historic accounts of the event describe how Tull’s friend Pte Thomas Billingham, a fellow footballer and goalkeeper for Leicester Fosse, saw him killed and tried to retrieve his body so he could have a proper burial. Despite the best efforts of his men, Tull’s body was never recovered and his family believed he lay somewhere in a field in the Somme. Tull’s grandnephew Edward Finlayson, from Edinburgh, said it was possible he had been buried, among others, by the Germans when the ground was lost to enemy forces. Finlayson said the family could not be absolutely certain that his body was buried at the site as the graves could not be dug up, but added: “Up until this recent information we had no reason to believe his body was identified or buried.” Tull is remembered on the memorial wall in the Faubourg d’Amiens cemetery in Arras, along with 35,000 soldiers whose bodies were never recovered or lie in unidentified graves. His findings are highlighted in the podcast Amazing War Stories with Bruce Crompton.