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Pte. Percy Charles Bradford
British Army 1st Btn. Royal West Kent Regiment
from:Singlewell Road, Gravesend
My father Percy Bradford was born on the 18th July 1897. He joined the first Battalion of the Royal West Kent Regiment 31st of March 1914 at Woolwich, Kent. He was an assistant Nurseryman before enlisting. He was only 16 years of age and was amused by having joined under age! He stood 5' 6" and he is described in his Small Book as being of fresh complexion with black hair and Hazel eyes. His religion was C of E.
Initially he went to Dublin and from there to Le Havre. Like all old soldiers who had had terrible experiences, he spoke very little about the actions that he took part in but on prompting by me he would sometimes divulge snippets of information. He talked about marching for days through thick mud up to his thighs and being covered in lice. The food was remembered with disgust, he hated corned beef or bully beef as he called it and the cheese and biscuits he said they called bung hole. One can only imagine why!
Dad talked about being left alone in no man's land and crawling back through the barbed wire to be challenged by a sentry of the Kings Own Scottish Borderers. Dad let out a trail of expletives at him and then they let him back. He related that when on Hill 60 in April 1915 he was ordered by Captain Tuff to follow him in charging a machine gun nest. Captain Tuff was killed and out of D Company only 10 men were left alive. My father is in the Imperial War Museum photograph far left at the back.
We have a photograph showing his company after they had been on the front line for nineteen days (he is front row second from the left). After continuously being in action he was badly wounded on the 1st of July 1916 during the Battle of the Somme and returned to the Military hospital in Southampton. He was advised by the medical officers that he should have his damaged hand amputated which he refused. He told me that with only one hand he would never get work and so he used to bathe his arm in salt water which he said saved the arm although he could not use his hand for the remainder of his life. He is still bandaged in the photograph taken of him with the first of his nine children in 1919. On being discharged from hospital he was transferred into a Labour Battalion and sent to Ireland until his discharge from the Army in 1919.
He followed his father into work at the docks in the port of London. He suffered from what we now know was Combat Stress Disorder for the rest of his life and his WW1 pals were the last thing he mentioned to me before he died in 1985.
