Sunday March 25th is the 100th anniversary of the death of former Northampton Town player Walter Tull, who was killed on the battlefield in France.
Recently, Chairman Kelvin Thomas and manager Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink joined war historian Jon Cooksey, BBC Radio Northampton's Graham McKechnie and the BBC TV Football Focus team in heading out to Northern France to visit the field where Tull was killed and various other sites as the club paid tribute to Tull and his colleagues.
Coming up on Saturday March 24th, Northampton Borough Council are holding a Centenary Memorial Service at the Guildhall with a 1pm start. On Sunday March 25th, a Walter Tull Commemorative Service will be held at All Saints Church in Northampton at 5pm, lasting for just under an hour. All Northampton Town supporters are invited to attend Sunday's service wearing club colours.
The focus of the club’s own commemorations will be the Charlton Athletic game on Good Friday. At 2pm at the Walter Tull Memorial, chaplain Haydon Spenceley will conduct a short service while the big screen will play a pre-match tribute to Walter at around 2.50pm. There will also be a special edition of the match programme on Good Friday. We will also mark the occasion with a period of silence in memory of Walter just before kick off.
Before then, all this week, here on ntfc.co.uk and across our social media channels, we will be producing some very special content as we pay tribute to Walter, his legacy and his memory......
Our next stop on our trip to the Somme region was the field near the village of Favreuil where Tull was killed.
Without our excellent guide, we would have had no idea that this was the field where the brave Cobbler lost his life.
There is nothing to mark the scene, no memorial, no sign, it is simply a farmer’s field, but we visited the field and we would urge you to look out for a video on our YouTube channel on Sunday where Jon Cooksey talks Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink through the build up to and the events of March 25th 1918.
Jon conveys the emotion and horror of those days far better than we can in words here and it is worth six minutes of anyone’s time. It is a very moving recording and to think we were actually standing on the field where Tull lost his life was very moving.