As Maurice Green, aged 73, was looking through a junk stall on a Rotherham a World War 1 bugle caught his eye, but little did he know just how special a find this would turn out to be for his family.
Maurice saw the rather battered bugle and recognised the last 3 digits stamped on the instrument as being similar to his grandfather’s army serial number, so after a little haggling he bought it for £5 as a kindof memento from that period.
However when he cleaned the instrument up, he got rather a shock when the entire number matched, meaning he’d found purely by chance the bugle his grandfather – Daniel Clay – was issued before what became known as the Battle of the Somme in 1916, one of the bloodiest battles in history which claimed around 1,500,000 lives.
Maurice never knew his grandfather as Daniel Clay was one of the first to go “over the top” at 7am on the 1st July 1916, and died that day along with 600 of his fellow soliders from the 8th Battalion York and Lancaster Regiment.
How the bugle arrived on a market stall in Rotherham remains a mystery, but Maurice and his family don’t really care. They’re just happy that after 94 years this final possession of Daniel Clay has finally returned home.
