Notes
The Bradford Grammar School website (see References) states: 'Arthur Kenneth Bloomer, Ken to his family, was the youngest of five children of George C. Bloomer and Gertrude Browning, born in June 1895. Although his father was an iron merchant from the industrial West Midlands, George took a B.A. degree at London University and became a school master who served twenty-one years at Bradford Grammar until ill health forced his retirement in 1912. He had a cheery good nature, a keen sense of humour and he
was an entertaining speaker. His specialist subjects were woodwork and the artistic handicrafts.
Ken entered Bradford Grammar in 1906 when he was eleven years old. He passed through the Classical Forms, although he had to repeat his Fifth Form year. In his final year in Sixth Classical he gained two distinctions in his Higher Certificates, and early in 1914 he won a Hastings Scholarship to Queen’s College, Oxford to study Classics. He was also a sportsman, a runner and a rugby player who was elected Captain of the XV in his final year. He scored nine tries in two very one-sided wins over Woodhouse Grove. Furthermore, he was a member of Horton (later Bradford) Rugby Club. In his final term his role in a performance of Sheridan’s ‘Critic’ was praised as ‘a delightful combination of earnest fatuity
and ingenious simplicity.’
Ken was due to go up to Oxford in October 1914 when the outbreak of war intervened. He at once joined the Bradford Grammar School Company (’C’ Company) of the Territorials, the 6th Battalion West Yorkshire Regiment. His experiences in the army are illuminated by the letters which he sent to his father in Worthing, and which his family have preserved. They reveal that Ken desperately wished to be an officer, although he resented the privileges brought
by rank. Despite his father’s lobbying, the battalion commander Colonel Wade, himself an Old Bradfordian, did not see him as officer material. Ken constantly asked his father for food parcels and for cigarettes. His battalion was part of the 49th West Riding Division, which went to Belgium in March 1915 and spent the second half of the year in the Ypres Salient. He described graphically the conditions in flooded trenches and the German gas attack of December, although he avoided this as he was on leave at the time. Another letter relates his glee at being appointed to brew beer for the keeper of an estaminet (bar) behind the Somme front in the Spring of 1916. Naturally, he enjoyed the fruits of his labours.
On 1st July 1916 the 49th Division was allotted a supporting role in the ‘Great Attack’ and so missed the slaughter of 07.30 a.m. As they moved forward into support positions, the casualties they passed made it clear all was not well with the assault. In the afternoon
the 6th Battalion received orders to attack the fortified village of Thiepval, a diversion to relieve pressure on the Ulster Division. They would have no artillery support. ‘C’ and ‘D’ Companies advanced across an open slope in full view of the German machine-gunners. A
survivor described how ‘Men sprang to the parapet, and were at once in the zone where machine gun bullets swept like rain. Here and there a man dropped back into the trench. Others fell in swathes on the parapet. A few struggled further … the furthest would hardly make more than a few dozen paces. Again and again men climbed to the parapet and added their bodies to the pile.’ Ken’s platoon commander, himself an Old Bradfordian, wrote to George Bloomer that Ken ‘was absolutely one of the best fellows and a good soldier … your son got shot through the heart so death would be instantaneous.’ He went into action with his great friends Hylbert Allum and Avon Moore, both of whom also died. The three friends were buried side by side, although later re-burial separated Ken from his pals.'