9th Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment
James Bradley was a ‘Brummie’ whose Army service lasted less than six months and he never saw action.
He was born at Small Heath, Birmingham in about 1887, the son of Bartley and Maria Bradley and at the time of the 1891 Census was living at Hednesford, Staffordshire. In 1901, when aged 15, he was a servant to the Sawyer family at 55 Heeley Road, Selly Oak .
In the first quarter of 1907 he married Albertha Dunn at Stourbridge, she being 18 at the time and he 20. The 1911 Census records that the couple lived at No 2 , back of 47 Harborne Lane, Selly Oak and they had a one year old daughter named Dorothy Irene. By this time James was working as a ‘steel hardener’ with a motor manufacturer.
According to the Birmingham Daily Post of 25 February 1915 James enlisted in the Army in September 1914 and was posted to the 9th Battalion of the Gloucestershire Regiment (‘D’ Company). His initial training took place at Codford St Mary on Salisbury Plain but over the winter period the battalion was billeted at Cheltenham. In February James suffered appendicitis and was taken into Suffolk Hall Voluntary Aid Detachment Hospital in Cheltenham, where an operation was performed successfully. According to the Gloucestershire Echo of 24 February he was healing satisfactorily when a bad abscess developed in his side, evidently unrelated to the appendicitis, and he died from this on 20 February, aged 28.
He was buried with full military honours in Cheltenham Cemetery, where a standard CWGC headstone marks his grave. There is an entry for him in the National Roll of the Great War for Birmingham.
It is believed that his wife re-married in 1934, to an Alford Williams.
Researched by Graham Adams 3 December 2015