Roll of Honour 2023

P AGE 13

W ORLD W AR O NE (1914 - 1918) INCLUDING THOSE WHO DIED LATER AS A RESULT OF THIS WAR

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

Name CHARLES EDWARD RIDGEWAY BRIDSON (Capt)

Lef SES 1909

Roll Number 1183 Died 04:04:1916

Set / House E

Arrive SES 19-04

Where St. ELOI, FRANCE Serving with KING’S OWN ROYAL LANCASTER REGIMENT

Age 26

Buried Reninghelst New Military Cemetery, Poperinge, Belgium Remembered

The Bridson Brothers Memorial Window at St. Margaret’s Church, Oxford, The Bolton School WW2 Memorial and The St. Edward’s School Chapel (Wooden Plaque) and The Cloisters Stone Memorial Born in Chelmsford 1890, the eldest of two SES brothers, both of whom were lost in The Great War. Charles Bridson was in the Remove Form and the 2nd Rugby XV and The Rowing VIII; on leaving the School he entered St. John’s College, Oxford 1909-10. He was commissioned into the regular army with the 3rd (Special Reserve) Battalion of the King’s Own Royal Lancaster Regiment in 1911; promoted to Lieutenant by 1912. With the outbreak of WW1, he was promptly wounded in October 1914 at the Battle of the Marne and again in May 1915 at Le Touquet, by which time he had risen to the rank of Captain. Then followed hospitalisation in Rouen with enteritis and gas poisoning in October 1915, which rendered him unconscious for 6 hours. His troubles did not end here and in April 1916, after being mentioned in dispatches, he was badly wounded at the Battle of St. Eloi, for which he was taken again into hospital in Rouen, where he died of his wounds. ‘Few officers can have borne so much suffering of the war for which he was wounded twice, invalided with enteritis and several gassed before the terrible injury which proved fatal’ (Chronicle). His younger brother John had been killed seven months previously.