Notes
The Bradford Grammar School website (see References) states: 'Frank Goodliffe was the youngest of nine children, one of three brothers who served in the war, two of whom were killed. His father Albert Stokes Goodliffe, came to Bradford from Rutlandshire in the 1860s as
a grocer. His fortunes prospered and he went into business on his own account as a wholesale grocer. In 1912 he had premises on Aldermanbury in central Bradford. He married Elizabeth Perrin, from Hyde in Cheshire, in 1874. Her father was in a similar line of business as Albert, as a pork butcher and provision merchant. In the twenty years from 1875 Elizabeth
bore five daughters and four sons, all of whom survived. She died in 1903 aged fifty. The two eldest sons John and George followed their father into the grocery business. The younger two both attended Bradford Grammar School, Walter from 1904 and Frank from 1906, and they left in 1910. This was the year in which their father took his second wife, Alice. Walter’s educational achievements qualified him for university, however he left abruptly when he was nineteen to emigrate to Canada. Frank’s strengths were Maths, Chemistry and Physics, and in July 1909 he won the Division prize for these subjects. He was also a competent modern linguist. Nothing is known of his sporting achievements, however he later became a member of the Bradford Rowing Club. Frank left BGS shortly after he passed fifteen to be apprenticed to the wool trade. In 1911 he was working in a wool warehouse.
Frank was nearly twenty when war broke out. He did not immediately respond to Kitchener’s call for men, but when the Bradford Pals’ battalion was formed in Autumn 1914 he enrolled. He served in Egypt, and then he was wounded on the first day of the Somme at Serre. When he recovered he did not return to the 1st Bradford Pals but was posted to different battalions of the West Yorkshire Regiment, firstly the 2nd and then the 10th. The 10/West Yorkshire
suffered enormous casualties on the first day of the Somme and had to be rebuilt with drafts of new men. At some point Frank was made a Corporal, responsible for a section of a dozen men.
The 10/West Yorkshires spent March 1917 training intensively for the forthcoming spring offensive and joined Third Army near Arras. When the attack started on 9th April they were in support, attached to 3rd Cavalry Division. The troops bivouacked in the open, having left their greatcoats and blankets behind despite the weather which was bitterly cold with heavy snow showers. On 11th April they relieved units which had advanced two days earlier, and they spent the following day digging a new front line across an open hillside north east of Boiry-Notre-Dame whilst under ‘very heavy shelling’. It was probably this which caused Frank Goodliffe’s death. The intense shelling which continued the next day probably accounts for the fact that he has no known burial and his name is one of almost 35,000 on the Arras Memorial.
Frank’s brother Walter had been killed on 3rd May 1916. Both were remembered on their parents’ grave in Nab Wood Cemetery, Shipley. Frank is also commemorated at Bradford Rowing Club. A third son, George served and survived the war.'