In 1965, a 12-Year-Old Boy Found a Blood-Stained Diary in a Garbage Dump. It Reveals the Story of a World War I Hero

From people.com

Museum curator Colin Reid identified the soldier as Claude Nuttall, who was killed in action just three days after his final diary entry.

NEED TO KNOW

• A bullet-pierced diary found by a 12-year-old in a garbage dump has helped uncover the story of an Australian World War I soldier
• The boy found the diary, written by the soldier, in Stourbridge, England, in 1965, and it was passed to museum curator Colin Reid 31 years later
• After investigating, Reid identified the soldier as 23-year-old Claude Nuttall, who died just three days after the final diary entry was made

Claude Nuttall on his wedding day.     Credit :

Colin Reid

A blood-stained diary found in a garbage dump in the United Kingdom more than 60 years ago has helped uncover the story of an Australian World War I soldier.

A 12-year-old boy found the diary in the town of Stourbridge, England, in 1965, the BBC reported Tuesday, Oct. 6. The diary had a bullet hole through it and was covered in blood. Its final entry was made on Aug. 10, 1918, but no one knew anything about the soldier who wrote it.

“Heavy bombardment by our guns,” the final entry read, according to Kingston Local History in Victoria, Australia. “Push still in progress... Packed up ready to move forward again. Prisoners still coming back. Wrote to Violet.”

Claude Nuttall’s diary.   Credit: Colin Reid

Three decades after the boy found the diary, it was presented to Colin Reid, formerly a curator at the Dudley Museum near Stourbridge, for an exhibition about World War I.

“We had a man bring in this diary,” Reid told the BBC about obtaining the diary in 1996. “He’d found it 30 years beforehand in a rubbish tip. We had decided that because there was a local angle to this, we would actually put his diary on display, just with a single red rose.”

Reid attempted to find out more about the soldier, scouring Australian military records, and later identified the soldier as Claude Nuttall, who had been wounded during the war and recovered at Stourbridge Hospital in the West Midlands, England.

Claude Nuttall’s diary.   Colin Reid

Nuttall, who was born in the Melbourne suburb of Cheltenham on 3 July 1895, met a British woman called Violet while in the hospital, and they got married, the BBC reported. However, five weeks after their wedding, he was again sent to war — for the final time.

Records from Kingston Local History indicate that Nuttall was killed in action in France at age 23 just three days after he made his final diary entry. He was the eldest of four children and enlisted to fight on 12 July 1915, just a few days after his 20th birthday.

He was also awarded the Military Medal in August 1916, for his actions in the trenches of northern France, per Kingston Local History.

The official Australian War Memorial website states that he died on Aug. 13, 1918.

Reid has brought his research together in his new book, The Digger’s Diary, which will be launched at Stourbridge Library on Thursday, Oct. 15, as part of Dudley History Festival, before its official release on Nov. 2.

Colin Reid’s book about the discovery of the diary.

“I just felt this is actually a personal story … I couldn’t help myself,” Reid told the BBC. “Right from the very first moment that I held the diary, I had that real sense of connection with it. I was really hooked.”

https://people.com/1965-12-year-old-boy-blood-stained-diary-garbage-dump-reveals-story-world-war-hero-12162643