Walter Tull

Walter Daniel John Tull was born in Folkestone, Kent, on the twenty-eighth of April 1888, the son of a Barbadian-born carpenter who had emigrated to England in 1876 and an Englishwoman from Folkestone. Both parents died before Walter was nine; he and his brother Edward were placed in the Children's Home and Orphanage on Bonner Road, Bethnal Green, in October 1898.

He apprenticed as a printer through his teens while playing amateur football for Clapton FC. He signed for Tottenham Hotspur as a professional in July 1909 — the first Black outfield professional footballer in the British game (the goalkeeper Arthur Wharton had preceded him by a generation but had played a different position). He played twenty senior matches for Tottenham across two seasons before transferring to Northampton Town in October 1911, where he made one hundred and ten further first-team appearances across the next four seasons as inside forward and half-back.

He enlisted in the British Army on the twenty-first of December 1914, two days after the outbreak of the First World War. He joined the 17th (Service) Battalion of the Middlesex Regiment — the Footballers' Battalion. He served at the First Battle of the Somme in 1916, was invalided home with shell-shock, recovered, and applied for officer training.

He was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the British Army on the thirtieth of May 1917 — the first Black combat officer in the British Army, in formal contravention of the 1914 Manual of Military Law that specified officer commissions for "pure European descent" only. He served at the Battle of Passchendaele in October 1917 and at the Italian front in November 1917.

He was killed in action near the village of Favreuil during the German Spring Offensive on the twenty-fifth of March 1918, age twenty-nine. His body was never recovered. His commanding officer, Major Frank Poole, recommended him for the Military Cross; the recommendation was not approved.

He is honored here as the first Black combat officer in the British Army.