In the city centre of Liverpool lies a small area of greenery called Chavasse Park. Until this year, few of the people who stroll there would have known how the park came by its unusual name.
But this month (August, 2011) a memorial was erected there to Captain Noel Chavasse, one of only three men to have been awarded two Victoria Crosses, the British military’s highest award for valour. The memorial also honours other VC winners from the city.
Noel Chavasse was one of identical twins born in Oxford in 1884. His father was the Rev James Chavasse who in 1900, was appointed Bishop of Liverpool. Noel and his twin, Christopher, went to Liverpool College where they both excelled at sports. Their academic progress was slower but in 1904 they were accepted at Trinity College, Oxford. The fine athletes represented Britain in the 1908 Olympics, taking part in the 400 metres, though they failed to reach the finals.
Noel graduated with first class honours and stayed in Oxford to study medicine. He qualified in 1912 and after a time spent working at a Liverpool hospital, he joined the part-time Territorial Army (TA). He was attached to the 10th Battalion of the Kings (Liverpool Regiment), the Liverpool Scottish, as a surgeon-lieutenant.
Brothers Met
A few months later, in August 1914, Europe slid into the bloody abyss of the Great War. Ann Clayton’s moving book Chavasse - Double VC tells how Noel was on duty with his TA unit when war was declared. His battalion arrived in France three months later.
Brother Christopher was already there. Now a clergyman like his father, he had been appointed chaplain to a military hospital at St Nazaire. The brothers met up several times when the main topic of conversation was Christopher’s horror at being involved in an execution by firing squad.
One of Noel’s first tastes of action came in the Battle of Hooge, near Ypres, Belgium, in 1915. The carnage was appalling and of 900 officers and men in his battalion only 140 men and two officers survived. For his cool courage, Noel was awarded the Military Cross as was Christopher two years later.
Now a captain, Noel proved his raw courage again at the Battle of the Somme. Once again, his battalion was decimated. Although wounded by shrapnel, he went into no-man’s land again and again to treat and recover the wounded. On one occasion he carried a man 500 metres to safety.
His unblinking bravery earned him his first VC. The citation stated: “Altogether he saved the lives of some twenty badly wounded men, besides the ordinary cases which passed through his hands. His courage and self-sacrifice were beyond praise.”
He received his VC from King George V in February, 1917.
Ignored Advice
Later that year, he won his second VC but tragically this time it was posthumous. At the Battle of Passchendaele, he set up an advanced first-aid post in a captured German position. The post came under heavy fire and Noel’s skull was fractured.
He was taken for treatment but defied the doctors and returned to the first-aid post where he received more head injuries. He refused to leave the post despite being in excruciating pain and continued to venture out under enemy fire to locate wounded men and help carry them to safety.
Then he was caught in a shell burst and was taken to a casualty clearing station with a severe stomach wound. He died two days later at the age of 32.
Like so many of his comrades, Captain Noel Chavasse was buried in the military cemetery at Brandhoek in Belgium. His headstone is the only one in the world engraved with two VCs.
Sources: lpsathletics.co.uk, Chavasse - Double VC by Ann Taylor, Liverpool Echo
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