Notes
All extra details are based on information supplied by the College Archivist (see Additional Information). This included the following biographical details: '(1907) Born 3 February 1888, Westfield House, Sutton in Ashfield, Nottinghamshire; son of George Gershom Bonser, gentleman of independent means, and Dorothy Ann Sims; m Lilian Prime, 3 July 1918. Subject(s): Natural Sciences; BA 1910; LRCP 1914. Tutor(s): J R Tanner. Educ: King's School, Worcester. Career: Attached to the First Eastern Hospital, Cambridge; Acting House Surgeon, Addenbrooke's Hospital 1915; Captain, RAMC, attached to the 12th Norfolks, Egypt and Palestine Campaign. Died 29 September 1918 (killed in action near Armentieres ).' Another biographical source adds: 'Geoffrey Bonser read Natural Sciences then trained as a doctor. He worked at Addenbrooke’s hospital in Cambridge until he was sent to Egypt in 1916, then served in Palestine. In one of his letters of November 1917 he wrote ‘I refuse to worry…my chief concern this last fortnight has been the getting of food and drink, sleep when possible, taking cover from bursting shells, attending to the wounded and evacuating them’ he wrote of being ‘perished with cold at night and baked by sun during the day. In December he reported that ‘we have had a battle and are in sight of Jerusalem. We are on the slop of a hill at the top of which the Prophet Samuel is said to have been born’. On Christmas Day 1917, he visited the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. He got his first home leave in July when he married Lilian, and then was sent to France were he was killed. His friend wrote ‘in action he was perfectly splendid, always cool and calm and absolutely without fear’.'