Tag Archives: Rifle Brigade

Victor Roundell George Biddulph

Victor Biddulph was the only son of George Tournay Biddulph and Lady Sarah Palmer, youngest daughter of Roundlell, 1st Earl of Selborne. He was born on 24th May 1897, after his parents had been married for over a decade. He shared his birthday with Queen Victoria, who insisted that the baby should be named after her. Victor was baptised the week following the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in Henry VIIth Chapel, Westminster Abbey.

Victor’s paternal uncle had been at the school in the 1850s, so it was natural that he should also attend Westminster. He joined Grant’s House as a half boarder from September 1911 until Easter 1914. He was probably planning on joining his father’s bank, or perhaps he intended to practice law. Either way, he joined the Inns of Court Officer Training Corps in 1915 and became a 2nd Lieutenant the 5th Battalion of the Rifle Brigade on 11th August 1915. His parents were keen supporters of the Ham & Petersham Rifle Club so his choice of regiment is perhaps unsurprising.

The following year Biddulph was attached to the 8th Battalion and went out to the western front on 12th July 1916. He was killed in action on the Somme, near Flers aged just 19. His body was not found, but a gravestone was added at the foot of his mother’s grave — she had died in 1910.

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Winfield Joyce Bonser

Winfield Bonser was born in Singapore and was admitted to as a Queen’s Scholar in January 1900. In his second term, he competed as a member of the College tug-of-war team, weighing 10st 3lb. He also took part in Cricket and Football, and was a member of the Debating Society.

As a Scholar, Bonser was amongst the Westminster pupils invited to the Coronation of King Edward VII on 9th August 1902, where he would have joined in the tradition of shouting “Vivat Rex!” The Coronation Song Book for the service describes how “these vociferous exclamations have been incorporatedÔǪ in a somewhat novel manner, as the Westminster boys, stationed aloft, sing their enthusiastic manifestations of loyalty”. The Captain of the King’s Scholars at the time, G.T. Boag, was unimpressed with such novelty, reporting in The Captain’s Book that “the acclamations for some unearthly reason were set to music and stuck into the midst of an anthem.”

After leaving the School, Bonser was admitted as a pensioner to Christ’s College Cambridge in October 1904, and became a scholar in November 1906. He achieved a 1st Class in the Classical Tripos, and went on to train as a barrister. He was called to the bar at Inner Temple on 28th June 1911. On the outbreak of war, he joined the Inns of Court OTC, and received a commission in the Rifle Brigade in September 1914.

Over the course of the next six months, Bonser rose through the ranks, becoming a Captain the following March. In July 1915, he went out to the western front, landing in Boulogne.

The day before Bonser died, the battalion moved out of their billets in Laventie. He was killed in action at Fauquissart, near Estaires, on the first day of the Battle of Loos.

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Royston Cecil Gamage du Plessis Le Blond

Royston Le Blond was born in 1887 in Norbiton, Kingston Upon Thames. In the 1901 census he is recorded as being a scholar at the Abbey School, Brackley Road, Beckenham, Kent. He was clearly very academically able and joined Westminster as a King’s Scholar in 1901. He left the school for Trinity College with the Triplett Scholarship in 1906.

Le Blond made the most of his time at school, taking part in Football, Cricket and Athletics as well as debating, taking part in the school’s Scientific Society and performing in the Latin Play. He became particularly exercised on the topic of speed limits, which was debated by the school society in 1906, and gave a speech with which many present day motorists would sympathise!:

‘Police-traps were a shameful abuse of justice ; they were often inaccurate and so unfair, and did no good to anyone except the policemen themselves, who were rewarded for every victim they caught—a temptation to neglect their proper duties for this lucrative method of business—and to the municipal councils, who reaped an excellent harvest from the fines’

He went on to add that he hoped:

‘the new Government would soon adopt the moderate and sensible system in vogue in France, where the speed limit was eighteen and a-half miles per hour and was strictly enforced in towns only’

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Le Blond staring as Syrus in The Adelphi, 1905

It is perhaps unsurprising that given his love of argument he opted for law as a profession, and was admitted to Inner Temple in 1909. He joined the 12th Battalion of the Rifle Brigade as 2nd Lieutenant in September 1914 and by January 1915 had been promoted to temporary Captain. He died in Camp at Salisbury on 17th May following an operation. He was buried at the Brompton Cemetery, London and there is also a brass memorial plaque for him at the church of St Mary the Virgin, Orton Waterville, Peterborough. The inscription reads as follows:

IN GLORIAM DEI MAIOREM
ET IN MEMORIUM
ROYSTON CECIL GAMAGE DU PLESSIS LE BLOND
NATI AD XXVI KAL APR MDCCCLXXXVII MORTUI AD XVII MAI MCMXV
SCHOLARIS WESTMONASTERIENSIS
COLL SANCT TRIN APUD CANTAB PENSIONARII
ARTIUM BACCALAUREI
INTER ADVOCATOS TEMPLI INTERIOSIS ADMISSI
A PUERO POETARUM
ET ARTIUM ERUDITORIUM STUDIOSISSIMUS
INGENIO BONO ET AMABILI INDOLE
OMNIUM ANIMOS SIBI CONCILIAVIT
BELLO INGENTI
A BRITANNIS CONTRA GERMANOS SUSCEPTO
HIC STATIM SE PATRIAE
LAETUS LIBENSQUE OBTULIT
ET ECENTURIONE CITO FACTUS TRIBUNIS
12TH BATTALION THE RIFLE BRIGADE
MORTE NIMIS IMMATURA OBIIT
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Thomas Stapleton

On the 11th of January 1890, Thomas Stapleton boarded a ship and set off to make a new life for himself as a farmer in North Queensland. Three years after leaving Westminster in 1885, Stapleton had enrolled at the Hollesley Bay Colonial College. This was a college that provided young men who were intending to emigrate with practical training to prepare them for their new lives.

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Stapleton spent only 5 years in Australia. A series of bad seasons, the spread of cattle ticks and rabbits were making the agricultural conditions difficult. He returned to England, only to emigrate again in 1896, this time to South Africa.

In the Boer War, he served with the Border Mounted Rifles as a Trooper, and as a Sergeant in the Natal rebellion. So by the outbreak of war in 1914, Stapleton was already an experienced soldier. He enlisted as a rifleman in the 1st battalion of the Rifle Brigade on the 13th October and was sent to the Western Front in November.

On the 19th of December 1914, the 1st Rifle Brigade was involved in an attempt to take the ‘Birdcage’ — a fortified German strongpoint east of Ploegsteert Wood. The attack failed — partly because British heavy artillery were firing short of target — and there were heavy casualties. Thomas Stapleton was among them.

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The British Cemetery at Ploegsteert Wood
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