Noel Chavasse

Noel Godfrey Chavasse

Noel Godfrey Chavasse VC & Bar , MC (born November 9, 1884 in Oxford , † August 4, 1917 in West Flanders ) was a British athlete and military doctor. He participated in the London Olympics in 1908 and later became one of only three men to receive the Victoria Cross twice.

Before the First World War

Chavasse was the son of Francis James Chavasse , Bishop of Liverpool and founder of St Peter's College , Oxford. He had an identical twin brother named Christopher , who was 20 minutes older than him and who later became a theologian. The twins had two other brothers and three sisters.

Christopher and Noel Chavasse attended Trinity College , Oxford . At college they trained on the rugby team and in athletics . You took part in the British team at the 1908 Olympic Games in London and reached the quarter-finals as a 400-M runner.

In 1912, Noel Chavasse passed his final medical exam and was licensed as a doctor by the General Medical Council . He then spent time in Liverpool and Dublin to train as a surgeon.

In the first World War

Noel Chavasse's tombstone in the Brandhoek New Military Cemetery near Ypres

All four Chavasse brothers (Christopher, Noel, Aidan and Bernard) took part in the First World War as officers: Christopher as an army clergyman, the others as paramedics in the Royal Army Medical Corps . Aidan was wounded and then missing. The other three brothers each received the Military Cross .

In the Battle of Guillemont , Noel Chavasse was hit by shrapnel while he was rescuing wounded from the front line, regardless of himself, and came up to 25 meters close to the German positions. For his behavior he received the Victoria Cross , the highest British honor for bravery.

While rescuing comrades during the Battle of Pilkem Ridge near Ypres , which marked the beginning of the Third Battle of Flanders at the end of July 1917 , Chavasse exposed himself to similar dangers regardless of himself, and was seriously wounded . Despite an emergency operation, he succumbed to his wounds in the hospital two days later and was buried in the Brandhoek New Military Cemetery . For his bravery, Captain Chavasse was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross a second time , making him the most highly decorated British officer of the First World War.

Of the four Chavasse brothers, only Bernard and Christopher survived the war. Christopher Chavasse married in 1919, had five children, and later became Bishop of Rochester . His son Noel, who was given this name in honor of his uncle who died in 1917, took part in World War II and received the Military Cross. At the time of his death in 1917, Captain Noel Chavasse was engaged to his cousin Frances Gladys Ryland Chavasse (1893-1962), the daughter of his uncle Sir Thomas Frederick Chavasse (1854-1913), a famous surgeon in Bromsgrove .

literature

• Theodore Andrea Cook: The Fourth Olympiad, Being the Official Report. , British Olympic Association, London 1908
• Herman de Wael: Athletics 1908. Herman's Full Olympians , 2001
• EB Fryde; DE Greenway; S. Porter; I. Roy (Ed.): 1941. Handbook of British Chronology. (Third edition). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1986, ISBN 0-521-56350-X .
• Ian Jones: Captain Noel Godfrey Chavasse, VC and Bar, MC, RAMC. (1884-1917) , 2003
• Stephen Stratford: VC & Bar Recipients. British Military & Criminal History in the period 1900 to 1999.
• Pawel Wudarski: Wyniki Igrzysk Olimpijskich , 1999 (Polish)

Web links

Commons : Noel Chavasse  - Collection of images, videos and audio files