Great War Lives Lost

The Cunard liner Valeria, while bound to Great Britain from New York rams and sinks the German submarine U-99.

Today’s losses include:

• A member of the 1913 All Blacks Rugby Football Club
• The son of a General
• Multiple families that will lose two sons
• A Rhodes Scholar
• A suicide

Today’s highlighted casualties include:

• Lieutenant Colonel Wigram Clifford DSO (Northumberland Fusiliers) is killed in action at age 41. He is the son of Major General R M Clifford.
• Captain Norman Cairns Robertson (Hampshire Regiment) dies of wounds as a prisoner of war at age 40. His brother was killed in July 1916.
• Captain Joseph Arthur Brearley (Devonshire Regiment attached Royal Engineers) is killed at age 27. His brother was killed in April 1916.
• Lieutenant Cuthbert Farrar Savage (Northumberland Fusiliers) is killed at age 26. He is the son of Canon E Sidney Savage.
• Lance Corporal Reginald Taylor (Wellington Regiment) is killed in action. He was a member of the 1913 All Blacks Rugby Football Club.
• Secretary William Webster Sant (Young Men’s Christian Association) dies of dysentary at El Arish on service in Egypt at age 25. He is a USA Rhodes Scholar of Lincoln College Oxford from Kenyon College USA.
• Corporal William Leslie Bradfield (London Regiment) commits suicide at age 24 by jumping out a window before he is to take up a posting as a Second Lieutenant in the Berkshire Regiment. His brother will be killed by a sniper in September 1918.