THE BATTLEFIELD PREACHER
Another young man who died tragically young at Passchendaele was Albert Penn. Penn was not long married, and his wife Florence had just given birth to their daughter when he signed up. Devout and sincere Christians, they’d met at the Wesleyan Methodist chapel in their village, where he ran the boys’ Bible class and she ran the equivalent for girls.
Penn was refused when he first volunteered because Florence was pregnant. ‘Come back when the baby is three months old,’ he was told. He did. Eight months later, when baby Mary Estelle was just 11 months old, he was dead.
Penn died on 30 October 1917; he was just 28 years old. His body was never found, but his name is listed among the missing soldiers on the memorial at Tyne Cot, near Ypres in Belgium.
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