AbstractThis essay reports an historical and sociological journey through family memories to the battlefield of World War I. It follows the short military career of a working class lad through the Territorial Army (Northumberland Fusiliers) to his death on the Ypres Salient in 1915. It builds on the bridges of memory, soldiers’ diaries, and newspaper reports to link the past to the present and explore the logic of war from the point of view of the ordinary soldier. The method employed generates new questions about World War I and is an accessible one for non‐specialists to use to organise their own journeys to the p