Alfred James Minchin was born in 1887 in Hermitage. James, his father, was a farm worker from Bradfield, and the family seems to have moved several times during the 1890s, living in Pangbourne, Compton, and then East Ilsley where they lived in Cow Lane. Alfred had two younger sisters, Ada and Beatrice*. Their father died in 1899 at the age of 32. Alfred at first worked on the farm, but in 1904 he joined the Army, enlisting at Newbury in the Royal Berkshire Regiment. As a 1st Battalion man, he would have spent time in Ireland, and was to be among the earliest troops to embark for France on the outbreak of war.