Manley James
English military officer (1896–1975); recipient of the Victoria Cross
Brigadier Manley Angell James, (12 July 1896 – 23 September 1975) was a British Army officer and an English recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces.
Early years
Manley Angell James was born in Odiham, Hampshire, on 12 July 1896, the son of Dr. John Angell James and Emily Cormel James, and the second of four children. The family later moved to Bristol, where Manley was educated at Bristol Grammar School in 1906 and joined the Officers' Training Corps (OTC), where he rose to the rank of sergeant.
First World War
Although intending to follow his father into the medical profession, having already entered a medical course at Bristol University in the autumn, the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, shortly after his eighteenth birthday, saw James, along with many others of his generation, volunteer for service with the British Army instead. As a result, on 1 December 1914, James was gazetted as an officer, with the rank of temporary second lieutenant (see temporary gentlemen), into the 8th (Service) Battalion of the Gloucestershire Regiment, a line infantry regiment of the British Army with a distinguished history.
The battalion, a Kitchener's Army unit raised from civilian volunteers in September, formed part of the 57th Brigade of the 19th (Western) Division (nicknamed "The Butterfly Division" due to its divisional insignia) and, after many months of training, departed for service on the Western Front in July 1915, arriving in France on 18 July as part of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). The battalion was to remain on the Western Front for the rest of the war. By this time James, promoted to temporary lieutenant on 28 June 1915, was in command of the battalion's lewis gun detachment.
With most of the rest of 1915 spent learning about the basics of trench warfare, July 1916 saw the battalion – then commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Adrian Carton de Wiart – engaged in the Battle of the Somme, specifically in the capture of La Boisselle.
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