Edgar, Bernard Roy

Son of Albert Edward Edgar, clerk, of 10 Trelawney Road, Cotham.

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Edgar was born on 23/03/1897, and attended the School from 1907-1913. He served as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Army, with the Machine Gun Corps, Infantry, 23rd Bn.. Edgar sadly lost his life on 31/07/1917, as a result of the War.

 

Edgar is buried in Bedford House Cemetery, Belgium, Enclosure No. 4 IV. G. 17.

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Bristol Officer Shot by a Sniper

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Western Daily Press (11th August 1917)

Bristol and the War

Bristol officer Shot by a Sniper

The many friends of Second Lieutenant Bernard Roy Edgar, Machine-gun Corps, will learn with sorrow that he was killed in action on July31 last. Although he had been nut a comparatively short time in France, a recent letter home mentioned narrow escapes, on one occasion a shell falling in the midst of his men, with disastrous consequences to many. Lieut. Edgar was educated at the Bristol Grammar School. He left the staff of the National Provincial Bank, Bristol, and joined the Artists’ Rifles as a volunteer, later obtaining his commission in the M.G.X. He is the only son of Mr and Mrs Edgar, of 10 Trelawney Road, Cotham, who have received an appreciative letter from a brother officer testifying to Lieut. Edgar’s courage and popularity with his men. He was shot in the head by a sniper whilst engaged upon observation work, death being instantaneous. The young officer was only 20 years of age.

 

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Highbury Chapel, Memorial Service to the Fallen (Western Daily Press 7th June 1920)

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Yesterday morning an impressive service was conducted by the Rev. Dr. H. Arnold Thomas at Highbury Chapel in memory of the young men connected with that chapel who had been killed in the war. The preacher took for his text, “Zebulon and Naphthali were a people that jeoparded their lives unto the death in the high places of the field” (Judges v., 18). In the course of the sermon he said that building, with which for most of them so many happy and sacred memories were associated was that day-still further enriched by the simple, but not he trusted less significant or beautiful, memorable tablet which they had set up in honour of those members of their families who gave their lives for their country in the late war. They needed no such monument to keep them from forgetting those who made so great a sacrifice on their behalf. Their names were graven on their hearts. They would never cease to think of them with affection and gratitude. In some strange way they seemed to be ever with them still.

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 “One by one they step into the ancient place, and we that thought ourselves alone meet in the shattered homesteads of the heart, the old familiar touch.”

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However near they might think them to be to them sometimes in person, they had none the less felt it to be both a satisfaction and a duty to inscribe their names upon their walls, that they might remain there so long as the walls themselves were left standing. They were not men who had any natural love for war. There was not one of them, so far as he knew, who had had any inclination to choose the Army as a profession, and most of them were already embarked on peaceful careers in which they had good promise of happiness and success. But the summons came, and they arose and left their work and their bright prospects, not without some pain and shrinking, as he knew from what one and another said to him, but without any display as of men who were doing anything difficult or heroic. It was a tremendous ordeal but they faced it with calm courage, and even with a brave show of cheerfulness. And now the record of what they did, stood there confronting that pulpit a sermon in stone. So they, being dead, would yet speak to them. They died in their early prime, but they did not die in vain. Therefore “we greet them again with tender words and grave.” Who, “saving us themselves they could not save; who kept the house unharmed their fathers built so fair, who found the secret of the word that saith Service is sweet, for all true life is death.” The tablet, which is of marble, bears the names of Alexander D. Anderson, Henry Ryan Bennett, Allen E. Bickle, Norman Durant, Bernard Roy Edgar, Charles Sidney Garlick, Wallace L. Hilljer, Frank W. Terrell, Arnold W. Tratman, Francis V. Tratmen and Michael Seacombe Wills. Mr George Oatley is responsible for the design of the memorial.