Notes
The Bradford Grammar School website (see References) states: 'On 4th September 1918 James Bland was due to have married Emily Hewitson at Shipley. The ceremony never took place as he had been killed in action twelve days earlier in the Battle of Bapaume.
James was the only son of William Wilde Bland and Mary Elizabeth Ingham. William was the Clerk to the Commissioner of Taxes for Wakefield and Dewsbury. He had moved to Bradford during the 1870s from Middlesex where his father ran a parish school. Mary’s father was a grocer in Listerhills (near Bradford Media Museum). They married in 1888, and their only other child was a daughter, Julia Gladys.
James started at Bradford Grammar School in September 1904 a few days before his twelfth
birthday. He was on the Modern side of the School and until his final year he was a competent pupil whose best subject was Divinity. In 1907-1908 he came bottom in most subjects in 4th Modern Upper, and he left the School aged fifteen to work for the Yorkshire Penny Bank of Bradford. He continued to live with his parents in Horton until he enlisted. They died within a few months of each other in 1917, while his sister had married Fred Haigh, a Bradford wool salesman, in June 1915.
On 11th December 1915, James volunteered in London for the London Rifle Brigade (5th Battalion London Regiment). By this time of the War it was clear the Government was moving towards compulsory service, so it is likely James travelled to London specifically to enlist in an exclusive unit of the Territorial Force which attracted City clerks and City ‘men of good position’. He became part of the second line battalion, 2-5th/London Regiment, and
was promoted to Corporal. He was in charge of one of four sections making up a platoon, at a time when platoon tactics were being reformed following the lessons learned during 1916. This battalion went to France in January 1917 and saw action at Bullecourt in May, St. Julien in September, and Poelcapelle at the end of October. In January 1918 this battalion was broken up owing to manpower shortages in the B.E.F. and Bland was part of a draft of 400 officers and men who were transferred to the 1st-28th Battalion London Regiment, the Artists’ Rifles. These men retained their L.R.B. cap badges and were not reckoned members of the exclusive Artists’ Rifles. Corporal Bland was in ‘D’ Company.
On 21st March 1918 the Artists’ Rifles was in Havrincourt Wood in the Flesquieres Salient, near Cambrai, when it was subjected to a gas and smoke cloud at the commencement of the German Spring Offensive. It conducted a fighting retreat to Pozieres and was then ordered to attack on the outskirts of Albert. ‘D’ Company was in reserve which perhaps
saved Bland’s life. Casualties during the retirement were 300 other ranks and seventeen officers. Over the following months spells of rest and line holding alternated until on 21st August the battalion supported an attack on Achiet-le-Petit. In the dense mist and smoke the battalion unconsciously passed through the battalion in front and found itself in the
front line. Bland was killed, probably by enemy shellfire, on the morning of 23rd August shortly before the Artists’ Rifles were to be relieved. He was buried a few hundred yards behind the front line, and his body was moved into Achiet-le-Grand Communal Extension Cemetery in 1920. His sister had the words ‘I pass, but shall not die’ placed on his headstone, and also on the family memorial in Scholemoor Cemetery. Emily Hewitson, who was a clerk-typist in 1911, never married and she died in 1944, still living in the family house on St. Paul’s Road, Shipley.'