Remembering the Fallen: on this day in 1914, Private Frederick Thorley Finucane, 9th Battalion, the Manchester Regiment, died while on active service in Egypt.

Both his grandfather and his father had served, so in March of 1914, when he was fourteen years old and had left school, he asked for and received his father’s permission to enlist. Being in a territorial unit, he was able to keep his job and train at weekends, which he did with great enthusiasm.

At the outbreak of the Great War, he was called into service, sailing for Egypt on the 9th of September. He wrote letters home to his parents, cheerful letters that described his excitement at being in a foreign land and being able to see the pyramids at Giza. Sadly, due to the appalling and unsanitary living conditions he contracted dysentery and could not be saved. Private Finucane is buried in the Cairo War Memorial Cemetery in Egypt. (One year later, to the day, his older brother John, who had fought in Gallipoli, also died of dysentery.)

Frederick, from Bardsley, Ashton-under-Lyne, was 15 years old.