Thomas Harold Broadbent Maufe

Thomas Harold Broadbent Maufe VC (6 May 1898 - 28 March 1942) was an English recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces.

VC details

He was 19 years old, and a second lieutenant in the 124th Siege Battery, Royal Garrison Artillery during the First World War when the following deed took place for which he was awarded the VC.

On 4 June 1917 at Feuchy, France, Second Lieutenant Maufe, on his own initiative and under intense artillery fire repaired, unaided, the telephone wire between the forward and rear positions, thereby enabling his battery to open fire on the enemy. He also saved what could have been a disastrous occurrence by extinguishing a fire in an advanced ammunition dump caused by a heavy explosion, regardless of the risk he ran from the effects of gas shells in the dump.

Further information

By the end of the war he had achieved the rank of major, one of the youngest to hold that rank. After the first world war Maufe completed his interrupted education at Cambridge and the Royal School of Mines. Maufe served in the Home Guard as a volunteer during World War II and was killed in an accident with a misfiring trench mortar during training at the age of 43 on the 28th March 1942 near Ilkley, West Yorkshire. He is buried in Ilkley Cemetery. [ [http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=10794130 Find a grave profile] ]

Maufe's name is listed on a war memorial on the gates of his former school, Neville Holt, near the village of Medbourne, Leicestershire, along with about two dozen other casualties of the Great War.

References

* [http://www.cwgc.org/search/casualty_details.aspx?casualty=2402688 CWGC entry]
* [http://www.homeusers.prestel.co.uk/stewart/yorkshir.htm Location of grave and VC medal] "(West Yorkshire)"