Use the below links to display a list of men by surname that appears on the War Memorial.
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Noel was the youngest of William and Esther Bradford's five children. He was baptised on 1st July 1888 at St James' Paddington. When his father died during the Summer of 1889 the family were split up. Evelyn was placed in King Edward's School, Florence and Grace went to Dr Barnardo's, and Henry went to Kingham Hill School in Chipping Norton. Esther returned to Bromley, with Noel, to live with her elderly mother who supported herself by doing laundry. Esther was not in good health suffering with heart and lung problems but was able to do some ironing to earn some money. Esther had been treated badly by her husband having on one occasion suffered a broken leg.
Grace, aged 14, died of consumption in mid 1897. On 6th November that year Noel was taken in by Kingham Hill School on the recommendation of the vicar of Christ Church, Bromley. Noel enjoyed sport and was in both the cricket and football teams. He also enjoyed woodwork and when he left Kingham Hill he became a carpenter. He stayed on at the school working as a maintenance man in the Estates Team. Noel stayed at the school until 1914 when he emigrated to Canada to work on the School's farm, Havelock Farm, in Windsor, Ontario. Within days of Noel arriving in Canada, Archduke Franz Ferdinand was shot in Sarajevo and five weeks later, the Germans were marching into Belgium and the First World War started.
Noel enlisted in the 1st Battalion of the Canadian Infantry on 22nd September 1914 stating that he had previously served 4½ years with the Oxfordshire Light Infantry. He was 5ft 7¼ins tall, of fair complexion, with blue eyes and fair hair. He weighed 155lbs, and had a broken right ear. Joining up at the same recruiting office on the 26th was another old boy of Kingham, Arthur Metcalfe, who Noel would have known well.
The following is taken from an address given by Gareth Williams, Head of Languages at Kingham Hill School (2019).
"By the Friday they were on a ship, the SS Laurentic, on their way back over the Atlantic Ocean to Europe. Four weeks later, they were in training on Salisbury Plain. Along with the 1,800 other men of the 1st Battalion Canadian Infantry, Noel and Arthur stayed in Bustard Camp on Salisbury Plain for almost four months on basic training.
In mid-February 1915, the battalion set sail to France and by the end of the month, the men were in trenches not far from Ypres. For a month or two, their job was simply to man the defences on the front line from time-to-time. A few of their men were killed or wounded from shellfire or snipers' bullets - nothing out of the ordinary for the normal course of the war.
Their first real taste of action was on 23rd April, 1915 when they were drafted in to fill the hole in the line created by the first German gas attack the day before. The battalion sustained heavy casualties in the battle, losing around a third of their men, many of them being gassed. Noel and Arthur pulled through and they had gained some vital battle experience. The bravery of the Canadians became widely known. They had withstood the gas attacks with no gas masks at all: they improvised by urinating on handkerchiefs and tying them over their mouths and noses.Their battalion stayed in the area for around six more weeks until they were moved south into France next to the La Bassée Canal at the village of Givenchy.
The Battle of Givenchy is well-known among historians as one of a number of battles of 1915 where British success was hampered by not having enough artillery shells for there to be an effective bombardment before the infantry went over the top. This led to the so-called "Shell Crisis", reported scandalously in the Daily Mail and led to the Liberal government having to go into coalition with the Tories. However, on the ground the Canadians had just to get on with it and make do with the shells they had .
On 15th June 1915, Noel and Arthur along with their unit spent the morning getting prepared for the attack which was to start at six in the evening. The late start was supposed to be so that if the British attack were successful, the Germans would not have had time to counterattack before it got dark. The artillery bombardment which preceded the attack was pretty small because of the shortage of shells and so had not had much of an effect on the German defences. At 6 p.m., the whistles blew and the two Kingham lads went over the top, just like they had done eight weeks previously. However, this time it was not so straightforward.
Noel was shot through the head as soon as he got over the parapet of the trench. Arthur, as a Lance Corporal, would have been towards the front of his platoon. He was more successful: he got further across no man's land, but he was killed as he tried to crawl beneath the German wire.
Neither of their bodies was ever identified."
Thank you to Kingham Hill School for their assistance. Photos are from their archives.
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