This Soldier Kept a Diary in the Trenches of World War I. A Child Found It at the Dump Decades Later, Pierced by a Bullet and Stained With Blood
Corporal Claude Nuttall recorded his wartime experiences in the diary. Now, after decades of research, a museum curator is telling the soldier's story in a new book
In 1965, a 12-year-old boy named Alan Southall was rummaging through a dump in Stourbridge, England, searching for treasures. Among the bottles and cans, he stumbled upon a diary with a green cover and dated it to 1918. Little did he know that the diary belonged to a soldier named Corporal Claude Nuttall, who had served in the Australian Army during World War I. The diary, which was pierced by a bullet and stained with blood, offered clues to Nuttall's fate.
Nuttall had married Violet Palfreyman while recovering from an injury in an English hospital and returned to the front weeks after their wedding. His last entry in the diary was dated August 10, 1918, and the following pages were blank. The diary eventually found its way to Colin Reid, a former curator at the Dudley Museum and Art Gallery in England's West Midlands.
Reid spent decades researching Nuttall's story and eventually published a book titled 'The Digger's Diary.' Nuttall's death was confirmed on August 13, 1918, just three days after his final diary entry. His wife, Violet, married the owner of a carpet shop and died in childbirth a few months later. Nuttall's legacy is a tribute to his quiet fortitude and extraordinary courage, as well as to the love he shared with his wife.
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