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Private Alick Bryett was born in 1879 in London, probably Islington. We know that he married Grace at Kings Cross in 1900 when he was 21. His occupation was a metal bedstead maker. His deceased father had also been a bedstead manufacturer. In 1911 the census records Alick, Grace, three children (another had died) and Grace’s mother as living at Railway Cottages, Stathern, where Alick was employed as a railway weighman at the Eastwell ironstone sidings. Sadly, Grace died the same year so her mother would have taken over bringing up the children.

 

It seems that sometime early in the war Alick responded to the call for more men to sign up and he joined the Leicestershire Regiment, enlisting at Melton Mowbray. We know little of his service in France, but the Grantham Journal said he was invalided home with “trench feet”. After recuperation he was sent to the Middle East with the same unit as George Rawlings and probably knew him well.

 

Alick Bryett was killed in action aged 37 in October 1916 at or near Al-Amara where there were campaigns against the Ottomans (i.e. the Turks) and he is buried in the Al-Amara War Cemetery, which is about 120 miles south of Baghdad on the River Tigris. The cemetery is now probably desecrated due to more recent conflicts.

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Roger Hawkins, November 2016