A Victoria Cross hero of the Charge of the Light Brigade is to be honoured in the town of his birth.
A memorial will be unveiled in Tamworth to Trooper Samuel Parkes, who was only the second British soldier to receive the newly instituted highest award for bravery from Queen Victoria.
He survived the Crimean War, but died in 1864, aged 49, and was buried in an unmarked pauper's grave in London's Great Brompton Cemetery.
Now his great-greatgreat nephew, Peter Elkin, has written a book called Tamworth's Forgotten Hero and a copy will go into the archives of his regiment, the Queen's Royal Hussars, which has the medal at its museum in Eastbourne.
On October 24, the eve of the 150th anniversary of the charge, a memorial plaque to Parkes will be dedicated at a service in St Editha's Church in Tamworth.
