Duffey, Albert James

Collection relating to 12947 Private (Pte) Albert James Duffey who served with B Company, 2nd Battalion Devonshire Regiment, British Expeditionary Force from 1914 to 1918. The main item is a scrapbook put together in a hard covered exercise book sized notebook by Albert Duffey in 1942. Duffy has titled his scrapbook 'A Tommy looks back' and includes his handwritten personal memoirs of his own experience of serving as a soldier in the British Army primarily serving in France, as well as his opinions about war in general. He has included in the scrapbook, black and white illustrations cut out from unknown sources, and in some cases these include additional annotations. Duffey was born in England in 1889 and emigrated to Australia with his wife and three children in about 1922, living primarily in the Newcastle region of New South Wales. In 1950, he returned to the United Kingdom to attend a reunion of the Devonshire Regiment Old Comrades' Association in Exeter and to try and contact relatives of Lieutenant (Lt) Charles Rodd, to whom Pte Duffey acted as batman. Lt Rodd was killed in action on the Somme, aged 19. Collection also includes five newspaper cuttings about the reunion and Duffey's attempts to locate Rodd's family. Duffey passed away in Sydney in 1964.

• Scrapbook of Albert James Duffey, 1914 - 1942