Pte Alfred Large, G/14842, 12th Battalion Royal Sussex Regiment, was killed in action in Flanders on July 31st, 1917.

A son of Mrs Susan Large and the late Frederick Large, he had enlisted in the Bedfordshire Regiment in October 1914 and was transferred to the Royal Sussex Regiment after his training at Newmarket and being drafted to France in August 1916. He was wounded the following November and sent back to England to be treated at the Ontario Military Hospital in Orpington, Kent. He had returned to France in May 1917.

A letter from one of her son's officers sent to Mrs Large at her home at 43 Chobham Street, Luton, said: "I have made inquiries of some of your son's chums who were with him on July 31st. They inform me that he was killed instantaneously by a shell dropping close to him, and a piece hitting him in the head.

"All the attached infantry that day were making roads behind the advancing infantry, and your son was one of five lads we had to deplore the loss of on that day. On the evening of the battle his body was reverently laid to rest on the battlefield with those of his comrades who had fallen with him, mourned by officers and chums alike."

As Alfred is now commemorated on the Menin Gate Memorial at Ypres, the location of his grave was presumeably lost as a result of subsequent fighting.

In the 1911 Census, Alfred Large was listed as a straw hat blocker.