“It was a magnificent sight to see more than 100 tanks go into action,” wrote Captain James Sherley, “the well known veterinary surgeon of Bedale”, back home to his wife, Jessie, 106 years ago.
The Darlington & Stockton Times continued his “graphic description” of what he had seen at the Battle of Cambrai in northern France by saying: “He and some others were told to sleep in a German dug-out but as it was filled with 27 enemy dead… they preferred to sleep outside.”
Jessie received the letter from her 51-year-old husband, the father of their four grown-up children, on Monday, December 3, 1917.
On Tuesday, there came another letter from the front, but this time not from James. Instead, it came from his groom who told her that he had been killed by shrapnel and that “he has had as good a burial as we could possibly give him”.
The D&S Times’ former evening sister paper, the Northern Despatch, told how the news “has caused the greatest regret in Bedale district, where he had a wide practice among farmers”.
The captain came from Twickenham and had been in practice in Tunbridge Wells before setting up in Bedale in 1908.
He had joined the Army Veterinary Corps at the outbreak of the First World War and had served at the front before returning to Ripon camp to head the Remount Department, which was in charge of buying and training horses to feed the frontline’s voracious appetite.
In October 1916, Capt Sherley returned to France. He “was very skilful in the treatment of horses, and he was in charge of a horse hospital about 40 miles from Paris”, said the Despatch. “He revealed to the French a method of treatment for an infectious disease which was carrying off a great many of their horses, and he was to have received a decoration for this service.
Captain Sherley's name presumably spelled correctly on the right hand side of the Bedale war memorial
“At his own request he was moved to a station nearer the firing line. After being in hospital suffering from gastritis and shell shock, he returned to active service.”
The commencement of the Battle of Cambrai had been greeted by the peeling of church bells back home in England as the new fangled tanks rolled over the German lines. However, the Germans quickly evolved their tactics to attack the tanks, and Capt Sherley was killed as they regained the ground that the British had won. Yet within days, the Irish Guards had re-recaptured that same territory and managed to cling on to it.
“I have for some time been researching the men on the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons’ war memorial at their buildings in London,” says Pete Matthews. “One of the most elusive men has been Capt James Sherley. I have found a photo of him in the Veterinary Journal, but other than this, I can find out very little about him.”
An Armistice Day service in 2014 around the Bedale war memorial in St Gregory's churchyard, which includes the name of Capt James Sherley
The photo with our cuttings begins to build a little of a picture of Capt Sherley, but can anyone tell us anymore about him? Research into him is made harder by his surname: the three local newspapers – the D&S Times, the Despatch and The Northern Echo – all called him “Captain Shirley” whereas his Commonwealth War Graves Commission headstone in Gouzeaucourt Cemetery and the war memorial outside Bedale church call him “Sherley”. The RCVS records also have both spellings, but surely the “Sherley” inscribed in stone is more likely to be correct than the “Shirley” in a newspaper?
St Gregory's Church, Bedale, on January 18, 1952, with the war memorial to the right of the main entrance
If you can tell us anymore about the captain, please email chris.lloyd@nne.co.uk
CAPTAIN JAMES SHERLEY was killed on November 27, 1917, at Cambrai and his wife, Jessie, received the first letter informing her on December 4, 1917 – the same morning that Amy Bradford, of Milbank Road, Darlington, received two letters from Cambrai.
One was from her son, Brigadier-General Roland Bradford, saying he was quite well after ten days continuous fighting – he must have been leading the action of which Capt Sherley provided such a “graphic description”.
Brigadier-General Roland Bradford, of Darlington, who was killed at Cambrai a couple of days after Capt James Sherley, of Bedale, was killed there
The second letter came from one of the brigadier-general’s officers saying that, after dropping back behind the lines for a rest after the continuous fighting, Roland had been killed by “a chance shell”.
Roland was a remarkable soldier: he was awarded the Military Cross in February 1915 for his bravery; on October 1, 1916, he’d been awarded the Victoria Cross for taking command of two battalions of the Durham Light Infantry when their commanders were killed and leading them both to an unlikely victory; on November 13, 1917, at 25, he’d been promoted to brigadier-general – the youngest ever brigadier general in the British Army. And 17 days later, on November 30, 1917, he was killed by “a stray German shell”.
Mrs Bradford must have dreaded the post. In May that year, she had learned that her 27-year-old son Captain James Bradford had been killed fighting with the DLI, and in April 1918 she would learn that her oldest son, George, had been killed in the process of winning the VC with the Royal Navy. He and Roland are the only brothers in the First World War to win the Victoria Cross.
Roland and Capt Sherley lie about 13km apart in British war cemeteries to the south-west of Cambrai.
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