Patrick Comerford
At 6:30 this evening (8 May 2025) the church bells at Saint Mary and Saint Giles are ringing across Stony Stratford, like church bells and cathedral bells across the land, marking the 80th anniversary of VE Day, Victory in Europe Day. Later this evening, people are asked to light a candle for peace and place it in their front windows at 9:30.
In anticipation of the commemorations marking VE Day, I recalled yesterday the names of the dead from World War II from the Comerford, Commerford and Cumberford families I can find who are recorded on memorials and graves by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
The 19 members of this extended family I have found to date on Commonwealth War Graves are from many parts of Ireland and Britain, including Wexford and Arklow, from Glasgow, Hartlepool, Hastings, London, Manchester, Mansfield in Nottinghamshire and Shrewsbury, and also from Australia, Canada and South Africa.
They include soldiers and officers, with ambulance units in the medical corps, drivers, civilian casualties, soldiers in the D-Day landings, merchant seamen torpedoed in Atlantic convoys, brothers and sisters, and prisoners of war of the Japanese in Borneo, Burma (Myanmar), Hong Kong and Japan.
They are buried or commemorated in the Phaleron War Cemetery near Athens and in the graves at the Normandy beaches, in Borneo, Burma, Japan, Nottinghamshire, London, Sydney, Durban and Montreal.
Five Comerfords who were Prisoners of War of the Japanese are remembered in the Sat Wan Memorial in Hong Kong, Thanbyuzayat War Cemetery and the Rangoon Memorial in Burma (Myanmar), Yokohama War Cemetery in Japan, and the Labuan Memorial on Labuan Island off the coast of Sabah in Borneo, Malaysia. Four Comerfords are named on the Merchant Seamen’s Memorial on Tower Hill in London and two are named on the Plymouth War Memorial.
Behind each name and number os real-life story among and the war-time tragedies and sufferings of many families.
Lilian Rose Comerford was 62 when she was killed on 30 September 1940 when a single German bomber dropped one HE bomb a ndhit the Plaza Cinema on Robertson Street in Hastings. Thirteen other people were killed and 35 injured, 12 seriously, in Hastings thatday.
Lilian was born in Ferozepore, Punjab, in 1878, a daughter of Francis Thomas Comerford (1852-1927) and Charlotte (nee Finch) Comerford (1851-1933). Her father’s family was originally from the East End, and Lilian returned with her parents and siblings from India to England as an infant.
She was brought up in Aston, near Birmingham, and later lived with her family in Hasting. After her parents died in the interwar years, Lilian lived at Rose Cottage, The Ridge, Hastings.
Monday 30 September 1940 saw the last major daylight attack against London during the Battle of Britain with about 300 aircraft trying to bomb the capital. The Luftwaffe also launched raids against other targets away from London, and Hastings, along with other towns, suffered as a result.
Throughout Britain, 175 civilians were killed on 30 September, and additional casualties died from their wounds in the weeks and months that followed. Although the Luftwaffe did have specific targets that day, many bombers dropped their loads at the first sign of approaching RAF fighters. There were also ‘tip and run’ raids carried out at high speed and low level.
Hastings was one of the south coast towns hit by Luftwaffe and Lilian Comerford was one of a group people who were killed at the Plaza Cinema that day. They included Albert Henry Southey, a World War I veteran and a member of the Home Guard, and his wife Frances, Clifford Arthur Glazier, Frederick George Hepple, Winifred Ada Spence and Ronald Horace Dutton. Leo Redver Ryan was killed by a bomb in Chalk Pit Lane, Thomas Moyle was killed on London Road, George James Brooker was killed when a bomb hit the National Westminster Bank, and Henry Walter Cook was killed at his home at 484 Bexhill Road.
Cecil Robert Kenneth Hume died in hospital the next day (1 October) from wounds received when a bomb hit the Plummer and Roddis shop. William George Sadler died in hospital on 3 October from injuries he received when a bomb hit Cambridge Road in the same raid on 30 September.
Gerald Francis Commerford was born on 8 July 1919 in Maclean, Clarence Valley Council, New South Wales. He was a son of Denis and Margaret Sarah Commerford of Lower Lawrence, New South Wales. His family was originally from Ireland, and they were related to Denis Comerford, who gives his name to Comerford Way in Winslow, Buckinghamshire, near Milton Keynes.
Gerald was a private in a field ambulance unit in the Australian Army Medical Corps during World War II. He was one of over 2,000 Allied POWs held in the Sandakan camp in North Borneo. He was transferred there from Singapore as a part of B Force. The 1,494 POWs that made up B Force, were transported from Changi on 7 July 1942 on board the tramp ship Ubi Maru, arriving in Sandakan Harbour on 18 July 1942.
Gerald Commerford was 25 when he died of starvation while he was a prisoner of the Japanese in Borneo on 9 February 1945. He has no known grave, and is commemorated on Panel 26 on the Labuan Memorial on Labuan Island off the coast of Sabah in North Borneo, Malaysia.
Apart from Commonwealth War Graves and memorials, Flight-Lieutenant Harry Alfred George Comerford (1905-1956) is one of the RAF fighter pilots named on the Battle of Britain Monument on the Victoria Embankment, on the north bank of the Thames, about 200 metres from Westminster Bridge, and almost directly opposite the Millennium Wheel.
Harry Alfred George Comerford was born on 13 August 1905, the eldest son of Harry William John Comerford (1874-1955), a popular music hall and variety comedian and actor whose stage name was Harry Ford, and Rosina Sarah Sipple (1881-1958), a descendant of some of the most interesting Sephardi Jewish families in Europe.
Harry Alfred George Comerford, was born on 15 August 1905 in Wandsworth. He joined the RAF on a short service commission in January 1927, and was posted to 2 Flying Training School Digby in Lincolnshire for flying training. When he qualified, Harry joined 16 Squadron at Old Sarum on 19 December 1927, equipped with Bristol Fighters. Within a year, he was posted to 28 Squadron at Ambala, India, near the border with Punjab, on 20 October 1928, and he served on the North-West Frontier in 1930-1931.
While Harry was in India, he married Georgiana Alicia Betty Davidson (1903-2001) in 1931 in Ambala, Bengal. Some months later, Harry moved to 31 Squadron at Quetta – now in Pakistan – on 18 March 1932 and he became adjutant.
Harry was in Britain on leave at the end of 1932, returned to India, and was then posted back to Britain in November 1933. He joined 40 Squadron at Abingdon on 15 March 1934, and then went on to the Reserve of RAF Officers on 7 October 1934.
At the outbreak of World War II, the RAF recalled Harry on 13 January 1940 and posted him to 7 Flying Training School, Peterborough, as a flying instructor and ‘C’ Flight Commander. After being acquitted at a courtmMartial in 1940, he was posted to 6 EFTS Sywell and from there that he joined 312 Squadron at Speke on 1 October 1940 as ‘B’ Flight Commander.
On Tuesday 15 October 1940, 550 German fighters and bombers attacked London, the Thames Estuary and Kent in five waves. Early that evening, two flights of hurricanes, Red and Yellow sections of No 312 Squadron, took off from Speke at 17:30 for a dusk patrol over the Lancaster area, with instructions to return at 18:25. Harry ran out of fuel and bailed out at 19:00, landing near Dalton-in-Furness with injuries.
His aircraft, serial No V6542 had dived vertically into farmland and was completely destroyed. He did not fly again operationally, and was posted away to the Air Ministry on 13 November 1940. He was awarded the AFC on 30 September 1941 and left the RAF when he resigned his commission on 19 April 1943. He died in Leicester in September 1956.
Harry Comerford’s brother, Leonard Jack Comerford (1914-1993), was a driver in the Royal Army Service Corps during World War II and was a prisoner of war in Germany. He died in January 1993 in Boston, Lincolnshire.
Lieutenant-Colonel Augustine Ambrose Comerford, DSO, MRCVS (1886-1944), is not named on any of these graves or memorials, but he was decorated for his role in World War II, and died during the war.
He was born in Stratford, Essex, into a family that originally came from Co Wexford. He was educated at Mount Saint Mary’s College, a Jesuit-run public school in Spinkhill, Derbyshire, and the Royal Veterinary College, London (1903-1909). During World War I, he was a lieutenant (1916) in the Army Veterinary Service (later the Royal Army Veterinary Corps), and was promoted captain. He transferred to the Royal Army Veterinary Corps Territorial Army (1922), and was promoted major (1926).
During World War II, he was Officer Commanding, 418th (Bedfordshire) Battery, 105th (Bedfordshire Yeomanry) Army Field Regiment RA (Biggleswade), and a lieutenant-colonel and commanding officer in 52 Heavy Regiment, Royal Artillery (January 1939 to June 1940), fought in Western Europe, and was decorated DSO (1940) and was Mentioned in Dispatches (1941) ‘for distinguished services in the field’.
He lived at Dean House, Caxton, Cambridge, and later at Home Farmhouse, Potton, Bedfordshire in 1928. He died on 25 February 1944 in Huntingdonshire at the age of 58.
Dr Richard Eric Woodgate Beaumont Comerford (1914-1980) was the consultant anaesthetist at Charing Cross Hospital for much of his career, and was a major in the Royal Army Medical Corps during World War II.
He was born in 1914, and like his father, Dr Beaumont Harry Comerford, he was educated at Sherborne School, Dorset (1928-1933). Later he studied medicine at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, in the 1930s, and at Saint George’s Hospital, London. He qualified in 1940, and received the degrees MB and BChir at the University of Cambridge in 1941.
Before the outbreak of World War II, he was commissioned a lieutenant in the Royal Artillery on 27 May 1939. During the war, he was a major in the Royal Army Medical Corps, serving as a specialist anaesthetist in India, Burma and French Indo-China.
After World War II, he returned to medicine and to Saint George’s Hospital as a registrar, then became resident medical assistant at Fulham Hospital, and at the inception of the National Health Service (NHS) he was appointed a consultant anaesthetist. He became consultant anaesthetist to the Charing Cross group of hospitals, but continued to run the anaesthetic department at Fulham until the move to the new Charing Cross Hospital in 1974. Dr Comerford died in 1980 at the age of 65.
