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		</div><p><a href="http://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/wartime-autograph-book-unearthed.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-full" title="A postcard sent to Private (Drummer) Edward Wolstencroft of the Royal Fusiliers found at Shepreth Village Hall in Cambridgeshire" src="http://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/min-wartime-autograph-book-unearthed.jpg" alt="A postcard sent to Private (Drummer) Edward Wolstencroft of the Royal Fusiliers found at Shepreth Village Hall in Cambridgeshire"/></a></p>
<p>An autograph book containing inscriptions written by First World War soldiers being treated in a military hospital more than 90 years ago has been unearthed by a pensioner.</p>
<p>Roy Chamberlain, 90, discovered the book &#8211; which belonged to his mother Mary &#8211; among old photographs at his home in Foxton, Cambridgeshire.</p>
<p>Soldiers being treated at a local village hall, turned into a temporary hospital in 1915, have written and sketched in the book and added names and dates.</p>
<p>A private known to have died during the Battle of the Somme in 1916 copied lines from Thomas Babington Macaulay&#8217;s poem &#8220;Horatius&#8221; which read: &#8220;And how can man die better, Than facing fearful odds&#8230;&#8221;</p>
<p>Mr Chamberlain said his mother was a cook at a manor house in neighbouring Shepreth, where the hospital was set up, during the First World War.</p>
<p>&#8220;I think it was quite common in those days for young people to have autograph books,&#8221; he said.</p>
<p>&#8220;Quite a few soldiers have written and drawn in the book and signed their names. My mother would have been in her 20s and single. I suppose she would have visited the soldiers. My grandmother worked as a nurse at the hospital.&#8221;</p>
<p>Mr Chamberlain unearthed the book a month after a 1915 postcard written to Private Edward Wolstencroft was found behind a wooden panel at Shepreth village hall by workmen.</p>
<p>Data shows that Private Wolstencroft, who came from Edmonton, Middlesex, died when he was in his mid-20s on July 7 1916 &#8211; a week after British troops launched their fateful Somme attack on German lines.</p>
<p>He has copied part of a verse from &#8220;Horatius&#8221; into the autograph book and copied a Mabel Lucie Attwell illustration, which would have probably featured on a postcard during the First World War.</p>
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