Ken Wayman

Ken Wayman was born in Hertfordshire and studied History and French at Bournemouth University. He taught history for the 26 years in the Midlands, accompanying GCSE students to the battlefields of the Great War.

His first book, ‘The True and Faithful Men’, traces the stories of the lads on the Pelsall War Memorial, uncovering sixty more Pelsall lads who have now been added to panels at the foot of the memorial. His second book ‘Thank God I Am Trying to Do My Little Bit’, traces the brief military career of a Walsall soldier, Private Jim Elwell of 7/Suffolks, relying on Jim’s original letters and cards from France. His third book, ‘Sorrow into Pride’, a collaboration with friend Barry Crutchley, documents the search for a ‘missing’ school war memorial and relates the stories of the lads on it. A fourth book, ‘From Rye to the Rhine by Way of Guernsey, Wipers and the Somme’, presents the illicitly-kept Great War diaries of Driver Jack Hickman, RFA. Ken’s last effort before ‘All For One Bloody Day , was ‘An Unremarkable Sacrifice’, that expands one name on the Menin Gate Memorial to the full story of a nineteen year-old ‘Old Contemptible’ killed near Ypres in November 1914.

Ken is married to Sue, and has two grown-up children, Vicki and David. He has long been a member of the Western Front Association and lives in the leafy village of Pelsall – for many seasons Ken indulged his lifelong passion for cricket, playing for Bloxwich C.C.