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JANUARY
2nd Lieutenant Edward Hamilton Jopling 143456 Brown 1st Battalion Royal Berkshire Regiment.
Edward Brown was posted to Winchcombe with his battalion for more training, after their return from Dunkirk early in 1941. He was fondly remembered by a boy in the Boys’ Home, in part of the former workhouse where soldiers were also based, as he led collections to give the boys a party. He was killed when a faulty mortar exploded as he was supervising live practice on January 5 1942, and was buried in Winchcombe Cemetery.
Edward Brown was the son of a doctor, who had been invalided home from Gallipoli in 1915, and taken a light post as Medical Officer of Health at Newton Abbott, in Devon and died in 1937.
Acting Leading Stoker Arthur Comfort K/7574 HMS Dublin
Arthur Comfort was one of the very few local men who volunteered for the Navy and joined in 1910. He was posted to HMS King Alfred at Torquay, and then to the Dublin, which saw action at Gallipoli in 1915., and suffered damage. He was promoted to Acting Leading Stoker in July 1915, and was with the ship in Belfast for repairs when he died of pneumonia on January 8, 1916.His body was returned to Winchcombe, and buried after a military funeral in Winchcombe Cemetery.
Arthur Comfort was the oldest son of the potter Elijah Comfort, and born in Cheltenham in 1892, before Elijah moved to Winchcombe. There he became an important potter both before and after the war.
