541124 - THEY ARE NOT DEAD: A Norwich Parish in the First World War Remembering a Lost Generation (special offer!)

By Stuart John McLaren.  Published by Larks Press, 2005

Taken from the book:-

After 15 years' meticulous study of every available genearlogical and military record, as well as privileged access to family papers, the author has produced detailed biographies of more than 100 men of St Augustine's parish in Norwich who died in the First World War, plus a selection of the survivors.  Many of the stories are surprising.  All are moving.

The reader will absorb through these lives the course of the war year by year; how men were recruited and posted from unit to unit, front to front, the campaigns they fought in and how they died.  The impact on their grieving families can be felt even now.  There also emerges a panorama of life in one of Norwich's poorest but closer-knit communities: the dominance of shoemaking as a source of local employment, large families in over-crowded homes and the unrelieved poverty which drove some to seek new lives in Australia, Canada and the USA, only for them to return and die 'For the cause of Freedom'.  St Augustine's roll of honour has the very rare distinction of commemorating one Norfolk Regiment soldier who was shot for desertion.  His story is told here in full for the first time.