Tommies Guides Hardback English
White Feather to Victoria Cross
The story of Harold Ackroyd VC MC MD and his Family
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This is the story of Harold Ackroyd, a regimental medical officer attached to the Royal Berkshire Regiment who was awarded the Victoria Cross in 1917 for his actions during the Battle of Passchendaele, Ypres in Belgium. The story begins by following the Ackroyd family from the 1770`s when they were working in the wool trade as tailors and drapers to Harold`s birth in 1877. Harold went on to become a medical practitioner and eventually became a research scientist and academic at Cambridge University. In August 1914 with the outbreak of war many answered the call to arms. In February 1915 Harold decided to volunteer and was sent to France as the Medical Officer to the 6th battalion of the Royal Berkshire Regiment, seeing action at the Somme in 1916 and at Ypres in 1917.He was sadly shot in the head by a sniper and killed while attending a wounded soldier on 11th August in Jargon Trench just west of Glencorse Wood. His legacy lives on through the sale of his medals, in creating a medical scholarship at Gonville and Caius College Cambridge. The medals now form part of the Ashcroft Collection, on display at the Imperial War Museum in London.
This is the story of Harold Ackroyd, a regimental medical officer attached to the Royal Berkshire Regiment who was awarded the Victoria Cross in 1917 for his actions during the Battle of Passchendaele, Ypres in Belgium. The story begins by following the Ackroyd family from the 1770`s when they were working in the wool trade as tailors and drapers to Harold`s birth in 1877. Harold went on to become a medical practitioner and eventually became a research scientist and academic at Cambridge University. In August 1914 with the outbreak of war many answered the call to arms. In February 1915 Harold decided to volunteer and was sent to France as the Medical Officer to the 6th battalion of the Royal Berkshire Regiment, seeing action at the Somme in 1916 and at Ypres in 1917.He was sadly shot in the head by a sniper and killed while attending a wounded soldier on 11th August in Jargon Trench just west of Glencorse Wood. His legacy lives on through the sale of his medals, in creating a medical scholarship at Gonville and Caius College Cambridge. The medals now form part of the Ashcroft Collection, on display at the Imperial War Museum in London.