Tributes to Tull
Lieutenant to be honoured on beach
The first black officer in the British Army will be commemorated on Ayr beach as part of director Danny Boyle’s Armistice commission Pages of the Sea.
Lieutenant Walter Tull, was Britain’s second black professional footballer who had signed up with Rangers, and trained as an officer cadet in Gailes, Ayrshire.
Walter- along with millions of other soldiers- will be honoured on Sunday, November 11 in a nationwide gesture of remembrance.
A large- scale portrait of Walter Tull designed by sand artists Sand In Your Eye, will be drawn into the sand on the beach and washed away as the tide comes in.
And the public will be asked to join in by creating silhouettes of people in the sand, remembering the millions of lives lost or changed forever by the conflict.
The project is the latest collaboration between the National Theatre of Scotland and 14- 18 NOW, the UK’s arts programme for the World War 1 centenary, and will use 30 beaches all around the UK as their canvasses for the mass art- work.
Each of the beaches taking part in the project will commemorate a different WW1 casualty.
Walter Tull was born to Alice Elizabeth Palmer, from Kent, and Daniel Tull from Barbados, the son of a slave, on April 28, 1888.
After the death of his parents he and his brother Edward were placed in a children’s home in Bethnal Green.
Edward was later adopted and it is believed that he went on to be Britain’s first black dentist after taking over his father’s practice on St Vincent Street in Glasgow.
Walter, however, began playing football with Tottenham Hotspur in 1909, and after touring South America with them he was offered a contract, making him the second black professional footballer in Britain.
When playing for Tottenham and later Northampton Town he faced a lot of racial abuse and prejudice, yet he went on to have a successful football career.
In 1914, Northampton Town began negotiations to transfer Tull to Glasgow Rangers.
However, the First World War broke out before Tull could play a game for Rangers.
He enlisted as a private in the Footballers’ Battalion of the British Army, where he was quickly promoted to be a sergeant.
He took part in and survived the Battle of the Somme, after which he was sent to England to recover from illness.
He then went to train as an officer cadet in Gailes, Ayrshire.
Although black officers were not allowed in the British Army at this time, he was commissioned in May 1917, thus becoming the first black combat officer in the British Army.
He died in battle in France in 1918, during the last major German offensive. His body was never found. Walter will be remembered this Sunday as the public pay their respects to millions of fallen servicemen.
• Activities on Ayr beach will happen between 8.30am and 11am.