At first it was hard to find any link between Albert and our village of Haddenham (Cambridgeshire) other than his name on his parents’ memorial in the Old Churchyard. He is not on our war memorial, or any of the Rolls of Service on which we found most of the names of the servicemen we have on our list.

From his date of death, 25th January 1917, we were able to find his record on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website, which confirmed his parents’ names, Robert and Hannah Brookes, and that of his wife, Adeline Holden.  

Albert was the fourth of five children of Robert and Hannah, née Hogg, and was born in Thetford, Norfolk in 1881, though the family were living in Fulborne by 1891. Robert was a Shepherd, but died in 1899 in Addenbrooke’s Hospital aged 54. Hannah died early in 1901, aged 52, and both their burials are recorded in Haddenham’s parish registers, suggesting they had living in the village.

Albert, now 20, went to live with one of his older brothers, Alfred, in Horninglow, Burton-on-Trent, where they were both Maltsters’ Labourers at the time of the 1901 census, shortly after their mother’s death, but in 1909 he married Adeline Holden, who had been born in Ely, although her family moved to Haddenham some time before 1901 and were certainly still here in 1911. So here is our link with the village.

Albert and Adaline set up home in Wellingborough, where their son Bertram was born the following year and a daughter, Eileen, was born in late 1911.

On 9th December 1915 he attested to the Staffordshire Regiment and initially was posted to a Depot Battalion at Lichfield but appears to have been part of a replacement draft sent out from the depot, embarking at Devonport on the 15th October and he disembarking on the 22nd of November at Basra.

In Mesopotamia the British forces, besieged at Kut El Amara, had held out until April 1916 before capitulating with 13,309 men becoming prisoners of war under the Turks, few of whom would survive the war.

Surrender did not come until three attempts to lift the siege had taken place with a cost of 23,000 British and Indian troops killed or wounded.

Later in 1916 the British, reinforced and resupplied, went on the offensive again, this time with success. On the 7th of December Albert Brookes joined his battalion in the field and just over six weeks later he was killed in action. He is buried in Amara War Cemetery (in present day Iraq) which has been almost entirely destroyed in more recent conflicts.

Adeline remained in Burton-on-Trent but must have retained close contact with her family in Haddenham as she is the most likely person to have arranged for her husband’s name to be added to his parents’ memorial.

Rosemary Gorman