Roll of Honour 2023

P AGE 162

W ORLD W AR II

S T . E DWARD ’ S S CHOOL , O XFORD R OLL OF H ONOUR

Name HUMFREY FAIRCLOUGH (Lt)

Roll Number 2399 Died 31:05:1940

Set / House B

Arrive SES 1928

Lef SES 1931

Where EAST OF DUNKIRK Serving with 4TH BATT, SOUTH LANCS. REGIMENT

Age 26

Buried Dunkirk Cemetery (Part II) Remembered The Dunkirk Memorial, France, and The St. Edward’s WW2 Memorial

Born Runcorn, Cheshire 1914, the younger of two SES brothers, both coming from the Leas School, Hoylake with a Scholarship. He appeared in the School Play and on leaving was in the Classical VIth Form. ‘He possessed rare intellectual gifts and before he was sixteen had reached the Classical VIth Form. His Form Master felt that he had one of the most brilliant boys he had ever taught. His contemporaries will probably remember for his invariable modesty and invincible cheerfulness as well as his gracious sense of humour (Chronicle)’. He left SES rather earlier than usual to join his uncle’s firm, Flow Millers, where he worked from 1931-9, appointed a Director in 1938, aged 24. He married and had one daughter. In 1939 he took a Territorial Commission in the South Lancashire Regiment (TA) in which his brother and School friend Bill Barnish (Roll 2218) were already serving. Soon after the war broke out he joined the South Lancashire Regiment (Prince of Wales’s Volunteers) as a Lieutenant, and as part of the BEF was sent out early to France. He was wounded during the great retreat from Sedan, his regiment covering the withdrawal of other British units and died shortly afterwards.