Roll of Honour 2023

P AGE 283

P UNJAB 1947

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

Name MERTYN BRADFORD-MARTIN

Lef SES 1940

Roll Number 3123 Died 20:09:1947

Set / House B

Arrive SES 1936

Where EASTERN PUNJAB

Age 25

Serving with 1/9th GURKA RIFLES REGIMENT

Buried Delhi War Cemetery, Delhi, India

Remembered The St. Edward’s School WW2 Memorial * * This is incorrect as he was lost after WW2 and should be on a separate memorial Born Eastbourne 1922, the younger of two SES brothers, both lost in WW2, from a Jersey family. ‘He followed an illustrious elder brother to the School. This might have overawed him, but being an independent character, Mertyn decided from the start that his performance should stand on its own merits and not those of his brother. By the time he reached the VIth Form, he had established himself in the Rugby XV and Hockey XI and decided to follow his brother in making the army his career (Chronicle)’. He was in the Lower Modern VIth. He joined the Royal Berkshire Regiment as a Private in 1940, and then gained a commission with the Gurkha Rifles, Indian Army in 1941. He saw service in India and Italy in the years that followed. Cut off from his family in German-occupied Jersey and the death of his brother in Burma in 1942, Merton also was dangerously ill in India for some time in 1942, but recovered and he survived the war as a Temporary Major in the 9th Battalion Gurkha Rifles. Mentioned in Dispatches 1945. He remained with the Gurkhas after the war, and was caught up in the Indo-Pakistan War of 1946-7.‘He was ambushed and killed by Sikhs in September 1947 in the Eastern Punjab, where he was a Major in the 1/9 Battalion, The Gurkha Rifles. He was in charge of a refugee camp at Nakodar. For the previous four months he had had as many as ten thousand homeless, starving and bewildered refugees under his protection, with only nine Gurkhas to help him’ (Chronicle).