Victoria Cross holders honoured

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Victoria Cross holders honoured


A statue to Captain Noel Chavasse and 15 other Liverpool-born holders of the Victoria Cross, the highest military decoration, has been unveiled.

The bronze statue in Abercromby Square depicts Chavasse and a stretcher-bearer rescuing a wounded World War I soldier.

Chavasse was a surgeon at a Liverpool Hospital before going to France in 1914 as a medical officer.

He won the Military Cross in 1915, the Victoria Cross the next year and was awarded a second VC posthumously.

Belgian cemetery

When in Liverpool, where his father was bishop of the city, Chavasse was a member of the Territorial Army serving in the Royal Army Medical Corps.

He went to France with the Liverpool Scottish Battalion of The King's Liverpool Regiment.

While wounded in 1917 he went into open ground to retrieve survivors and was mortally injured.

He died on 4 August 1917 at the age of 32 and posthumously received the bar to his VC. He is buried at Brandhoek New Military Cemetery in Belgium.

His brother, Aidan, who was a Lieutenant in the 17th Battalion of The King's Liverpool Regiment was killed exactly a month before and is commemorated at the Ypres Menin Gate Memorial in Belgium.



Story from BBC NEWS:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/h...de/7566784.stm

Published: 2008/08/17

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And only today, I walked past the site where he received his wounds that would prove fatal! A very brave man and dutiful family, who gave their everything!

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A well-deserved honour for the city to be proud of.

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Liverpool VC's

by James Murphy

In Liverpool local heroes tend to be drawn from football or the music business or from the period when the city was one of Britain's greatest ports. Although it has produced many military heroes, only double VC winner Noel Chavasse has had the recognition he deserves. James Murphy, in this meticulously researched and sympathetically written book, sets the record straight. His biographies of twenty-three Liverpool VC winners show what extraordinary sacrifices the men of the city made when they were called on to fight for their country. He gives graphic accounts of the exploits that won them the VC, and he recalls other actions in which they were involved. His main purpose is to show these men at war, but he also provides an insight into their civilian lives, and he records the times they lived in. And he dispels the myths and corrects the errors of fact that have grown up around them.

http://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/?product_id=1717