‘Friday 30th April 1915. Went into trenches at Ploegstart. At night’ Diary entry of Albert Clark, 6th Battalion, the Gloucestershire Regiment

Albert Clark worked at the Wills tobacco factory. In November 1914, aged 25, he joined the local regiment and went from Henbury to training camps and then to the Western Front in France. His pay was 1/- (5p) a day.

He wrote his will in the back of his Soldier’s Pay Book. He left everything he had, which included his army pension, money in the Wills Workers’ Men’s Conservative Benefit Society and personal effects, to his fiancée Elsie Pearce. He carried her photo with him in his pocket.

They married in July 1915, perhaps when Albert had finished his training and was about to go on active service. He went out to France but within weeks he was injured. In August 1915 he was brought back to Bristol on the hospital ship Dieppe.

A year after his wedding day, he was invalided out of the army. He died in 1950.