Tyneside Irish Brigade Memories Project

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On 1 October 1916, at Eaucourt l'Abbaye on the Somme, the commanding officer of a forward battalion had been wounded and evacuated and the right flank of an entire brigade was exposed. A British officer whose permanent rank was Lieutenant asked permission to take command of the stricken unit in addition to his own. He walked forward under continuous machine-gun fire to the foremost lines. He was twenty-four years old.

His name was Roland Boys Bradford. Born in 1892 in Witton Park, County Durham, the youngest son of a colliery manager, he was commissioned into the Durham Light Infantry in 1910. He sailed to France with the British Expeditionary Force in September 1914. In D Company's first major action near Troyon, the battalion suffered in a matter of hours casualties comparable to those the DLI had sustained across the entire Boer War. Bradford was the only officer in D Company to survive. A Military Cross followed for his actions at Ypres and at Armentières. By August 1916, still holding the permanent rank of Lieutenant, he commanded the 9th Battalion DLI as Temporary Lieutenant Colonel.

Sixteen days before the Victoria Cross action he had been wounded leading his men east of Martinpuich. He stayed at duty. His second-in-command, Major E. G. Crouch DCM, later recorded that Bradford's determination would not allow him to leave his battalion, and that two months afterward the medical officer was still dressing the wound. He left notes on command written in his own hand. They read: "Look after men's comfort and welfare. Men not machines. Justice. Friend as well as leader."

Field Marshal Earl Haig, Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force, wrote in 1918 that he had personally followed Bradford's career with friendly interest, describing him as an officer of outstanding talent, exceptionally young as a battalion and brigade commander but particularly capable. Haig stated that the example Bradford had set was, in his opinion, worthy of being kept in continual remembrance by the nation he had died to serve.

On 10 November 1917, Bradford was promoted to Brigadier General, the youngest general officer in the British Army. He had commanded his brigade for twenty days when he was killed by a German artillery shell near Bourlon Wood during the Battle of Cambrai. A national memorial fund endorsed by Haig ran for fifteen years. It raised two thousand six hundred and sixty-four pounds. A porch at Darlington Memorial Hospital was named for him. No national monument was built.

When Bradford returned from his Victoria Cross investiture he assembled his battalion and told them to sing "Abide with Me" every night, in the trenches or in billets. It became the regimental hymn of the entire Durham Light Infantry. He had a small wooden prayer rostrum built so that he could lead his men in prayer at the front. It survives in the DLI Chapel at Durham Cathedral. In the weeks before his death he commissioned three thousand personalised cards, one for every officer and man in his battalion, at his own expense. He was killed before they were delivered.

The first public statue to Bradford was unveiled in 2017, a century after his death, in a small County Durham village. His Victoria Cross and Military Cross are held at the University of Durham, accessible only by individual appointment. Most people in Britain do not recognise his name.

His name is Roland Boys Bradford. He was twenty-five years old. He deserves to be remembered.