59604 Pte Walter Bradford

Royal Welsh Fusiliers

Private (Pte) Walter Bradford was a bricklayer who lived at 87 Victoria Avenue, Newport. A married man with no children he appears to have served 4 years with the local Militia Volunteer Battalion of the South Wales Borderers since his attestation papers record him as serving 4 years 13 days with the "VB SWB" ( The non deployable Militia was replaced by the Teritorial Army (TA) in 1908). Walter  volunteered for regular service on 4 Dec 1915 and subsequently served twice with the RWF, once with the Cheshire Regt and once with the Northumberland Fusiliers. He is also recorded as serving with the "64th Ir Reserve Bn".

He was promoted to L/Cpl in August 1916, but was a Pte again when posted to the 8th Bn RWF in March 1917.Walter is recorded as qualifying for the Victory Medal and the British War Medal,

Walter would have been regarded as an old man by the army and his service records suggest he served most of is time with training units in the UK. Perhaps he was regarded as too old for the trenches but fitted by his TA service to train recruits?  He was finally discharged on 11 May 1919 and awarded a pension of five shillings and sixpence a week for 56 weeks in respect of a "Weakness of shoulder".  He was 38 and returned to Newport and, hopefully, to a long and happy life with his wife Kathleen (nee Alker). Do you know more of him? 

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Pte Walter Bradford's Victory medal. It is a little battered after 90 years.

Was he a regular in the British Legion parade every November?

As an ex Royal Welch Fusilier myself (Note that in WW1 the spelling is with an "S", the archaic "C" spelling was adopted in 1920) I am very interested in Walter and why he moved about quite as much as he did.The RWF raised a total of 40 Bns over the course of WW1.