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The name Walter Tull likely falls on many a deaf ear. Tull, though, was one of English football's first black players and the British Army's first ever black officer to command white troops. His prowess on the field led to Tull playing in the First Division, while his bravery on the battlefield earned him a Military Cross recommendation, a military decoration he ultimately didn't receive. Now, Tull's life and career—and the glaring oversight regarding his wartime commendation—are currently being reappraised.
So, how did Walter Tull raise himself above the ranks of sport and the armed forces? Click through and learn more about this forgotten football pioneer and war hero.
Displaying a gift for the beautiful game, the 20-year-old was signed by top amateur club Clapton FC. By the end of that year, the press were calling him the "catch of the season."
In 1895 when he was seven, Walter's mother died of cancer. Two years later after he'd remarried, Daniel Tull passed away from heart disease. Daniel is pictured at home in 1895 in Folkestone with his children, Walter, Cissie, William, Edward, and Elsie.
His paternal grandparents were proud Barbadians, though his grandfather was a former slave. Pictured is his grandmother, Anna Tull, circa 1877.
A keen sportsman, Walter started playing soccer in 1908. He's seen here second from the left in the front row in the Bonner Road Children's Home Football Team lineup.
Walter Daniel John Tull was born on April 28, 1888, in Folkestone, Kent. His father, Daniel Tull, was from Barbados, and his mother, Alice Palmer, was a white woman from Kent.
After the First World War broke out in August 1914, Tull became the first Northampton Town player to enlist in the British Army, in December of that year.
This is the London Professional Football Charity Fund gold medal awarded to Walter Tull in his first season with Tottenham Hotspur.
Later that same month, he made his home Football League debut against FA Cup-holders, Manchester United, in front of more than 30,000. The Daily Graphic was one of several newspapers to carry photographs of Tull in action.
In 1909, Walter signed for Football League First Division team Tottenham Hotspur. Tull made his debut for Tottenham in September 1909 in the position of inside forward against Sunderland.
But it wasn't long before Tull started receiving racial abuse on the field. The taunts and name-calling affected his game and, while he remained professional and composed despite the intense provocation, after 10 first-team appearances, scoring twice, he was dropped to the reserves.
At the start of the conflict, Tull joined the 17th (1st Football) Battalion of the Middlesex Regiment as a Lance-Corporal.
Walter Tull was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant on May 30, 1917, to become one of the first mixed-heritage infantry officers in a regular British Army regiment. This was during a time when army regulations prohibited a person of "non-European descent" from undertaking officer training.
After surviving one of the deadliest military confrontations in human history, Tull was summoned back to Britain to attend officer training, specifically in Ayrshire, Scotland.
It was while in Scotland that Walter Tull took leave to meet his brother Edward, his sister Cissie, and Edward's adoptive mother, Jean Warnock, during a vacation in Garelochhead, in Argyll and Bute.
Walter Tull, looking smart and dapper in his officer's uniform is pictured here with Jean Warnock, his brother Edward's Glaswegian adoptive mother.
And here's Tull looking relaxed and happy with his older brother Edward in the Garelochhead sunshine.
Second Lieutenant Walter Tull embarked on his third tour of duty in France in the summer of 1917. He joined fellow officers for this photograph before being posted to the Italian front later that year.
In the town of Northampton, where Walter Tull played soccer in 1911, the Walter Tull Memorial stands as a permanent reminder of the orphan who overcame adversity all of his life to reach the top tier of the sport he loved and who endured prejudice to rank among the very finest the British Army produced.
Sources: (BBC Sport) (The National Archives) (National Army Museum) (UK Parliament) (War Memorials Online)
Edward Tull was also sent a memorial scroll commemorating his brother's passing as one of "those who, at the call of King and Country, left all that was dear to them, endured hardness, faced danger, and finally passed out of the sight of men by the path of duty and self-sacrifice, giving up their own lives that others might live in freedom."
Walter Tull's immediate next of kin was his older brother Edward. This is the telegram he received from Buckingham Palace informing him of Walter's death.
Unable to cope with five children, Daniel's widow Clara Palmer, Alice's cousin, was relieved of the two boys of school age, Walter and Edward, both of whom ended up in an orphanage. Pictured is Edward, who later qualified as a dentist, the first mixed-heritage person to practice this profession in the United Kingdom.
In October 1911, Tull's contract was bought by Southern Football League club Northampton Town. He played a full-back position in defense.
Tull was shipped to France in 1915, where he experienced life in the trenches for the first time. He ended up in hospital suffering from shell shock.
The following year he returned to the front line and fought in the Battle of the Somme.
Tull and the 23rd Battalion returned to northern France on March 8, 1918. On March 25, Walter Tull was killed in action near the village of Favreuil during the First Battle of Bapaume. His body was never recovered.
This is a general view of the field in Favreuil in which Walter Tull was killed on March 25, 1918. In a tragic twist of fate, Tull had signed on to play for Glasgow Rangers Football Club as soon as the war ended, resuming his career as a unique and talented soccer player.
Tull's name can be found among the 35,942 soldiers of the forces of the United Kingdom, South Africa, and New Zealand, with no known grave, who died in the Arras sector between the spring of 1916 and August 7, 1918.
In October 2020, one of four special edition postboxes created by the Royal Mail to mark Black History Month in Glasgow, Scotland, featured Second Lieutenant Walter Tull.
In Italy, Tull was praised in dispatches for his "gallantry and coolness," having led his unit on a night-raiding party into enemy territory and returning them unharmed. He was even recommended for the Military Cross, but never received it.
The inspiring story of the soccer player who became a war hero
The life and times of Walter Tull
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The name Walter Tull likely falls on many a deaf ear. Tull, though, was one of English football's first black players and the British Army's first ever black officer to command white troops. His prowess on the field led to Tull playing in the First Division, while his bravery on the battlefield earned him a Military Cross recommendation, a military decoration he ultimately didn't receive. Now, Tull's life and career—and the glaring oversight regarding his wartime commendation—are currently being reappraised.
So, how did Walter Tull raise himself above the ranks of sport and the armed forces? Click through and learn more about this forgotten football pioneer and war hero.