Thomas Edward Rendle

He dug buried men from shattered trenches under fierce fire.

Thomas Edward Rendle was born in Bedminster, Bristol, on 14 December 1884, the eldest of seven children. His father James worked as a painter and packer. After his mother Charlotte died in 1898, the family was separated and some children entered the workhouse. Rendle attended St Luke's School and subsequently Kingswood Reformatory before entering the Army.

He enlisted in the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry on 5 September 1902 and joined its 1st Battalion in South Africa the following January. Postings included Stellenbosch, Middelburg and Wynberg. At Wynberg he married Lilian Sarah Crowe, the daughter of a military bandsman, in February 1906. Their children Ruby and Edward were born in 1907 and 1909. Rendle became a bandsman himself, later serving at Woolwich and in Ireland. The musicians' additional wartime duty as stretcher-bearers placed him directly among the battalion's casualties.

He went to France on 13 August 1914. At Wulverghem in Belgium on 20 November, heavy rifle fire and howitzer bombardment inflicted casualties and brought trench parapets down upon the defenders. Rendle attended the wounded under fire and repeatedly went to men trapped beneath the fallen earth. His official citation records both his conspicuous courage in treating casualties and his rescues of buried soldiers; it was published in the London Gazette on 11 January 1915, issue 29037, page 365.

The award brought attention to an often overlooked part of battlefield service. In March 1915 the Musicians' Company presented him with a gold watch. King George V invested him with the Victoria Cross at Buckingham Palace on 12 July. Russia also recognized his conduct with the Cross of St George, fourth class.

Rendle continued his Army career after the war and became a band sergeant in October 1919. He was discharged medically unfit in November 1920 and emigrated to South Africa with his family in February 1921. In Cape Town he worked for Standard Bank as a caretaker and stationery controller and served as part-time bandmaster of the Duke of Edinburgh's Own Volunteer Rifles. In 1936–37 he helped expose a man who had impersonated him at a Glasgow parade. Rendle died at Groote Schuur Hospital on 1 June 1946 and was buried in Maitland Cemetery, Cape Town.

Victoria Cross citation

For conspicuous bravery on the 20th November, near Wulverghem, when he attended to the wounded under very heavy shell and rifle fire, and rescued men from the trenches in which they had been buried by the blowing in of the parapets by the fire of the enemy’s heavy howitzers.