Remembering the Fallen: on this day in 1917, Private Alfred Thorpe Genner, 16th Battalion, Royal Welsh Fusiliers, was killed in action at Ypres.

His parents’ only son, he was educated at the Agricultural Commercial College in Cleobury Mortimer before working in his family’s grocery business. He enlisted in the army in November of 1915, a few days after turning eighteen; and at 5’6” he stood taller than the average recruit at the time.

In March of 1916 he sailed to France from Folkstone to Etapes on the S.S. Queen. In July he saw action at the battles of Albert and Mametz Wood on the Somme, at which time his battalion suffered severe casualties. Private Genner is commemorated on a special memorial in Essex Farm Cemetery, West Vlaanderen, Belgium, one of nineteen solders who are buried there – it is not known which grave is his as such information was unfortunately lost.

Alfred, from Bitterley in Shropshire, was 19 years old.