PRIVATE WILLIAM BRADBURY
ROYAL INNISKILLING FUSILIERS
17TH AUGUST 1917 AGE 19
BURIED: BRANDHOECK MILITARY CEMETERY, BELGIUM
William Bradbury was a hairdresser from Wallasey in Cheshire. He joined the 3rd Cheshire Regiment in April 1917, a month before his nineteenth birthday, he transferred to the 8th Inniskilling Fusiliers and went with them to France on 27 June that year. He died just under two months later, on 17 August, from wounds received in action at Passchendaele the previous day.
William's elder brother, George, had enlisted a month earlier and died on 7 November 1918 from illness contracted on active service.
The War Graves Commission did not allow relatives to insult the Germans, see my article His Loving Parents Curse the Hun, but they did allow William Bradbury's parents to call them "a ruthless foe". His brother George's inscription was chosen by his wife and is much more conventional - "His duty nobly done R.I.P.