Thomas Harold Broadbent Maufe

He extinguished burning charges under fire to save his guns.

Thomas Harold Broadbent Maufe was born at Ilkley on 6 May 1898. Educated at Uppingham and Woolwich, he was commissioned into the Royal Garrison Artillery in March 1916 and reached France that July.

At Feuchy on 4 June 1917, Maufe repaired a telephone line unaided under intense shellfire, enabling his battery to resume firing. Enemy shelling also ignited ammunition near the position. Maufe went into the danger and helped extinguish the burning charges, preventing a destructive explosion. His courage under fire earned the Victoria Cross, presented that November.

After the war he left the Army with captain’s rank, studied at Cambridge and the Royal School of Mines, and worked in tin smelting and mining before becoming a director of his family’s Bradford department store. He married in 1932 and was active in Scouting. During the Second World War he served as a Home Guard private. On 28 March 1942 he was killed when a mortar bomb exploded during training near Ilkley. He was buried there.

Official Victoria Cross citation (London Gazette, 2 August 1917):

For most conspicuous bravery and initiative.

Under intense artillery fire this officer on his own initiative repaired, unaided, the telephone line between the forward and rear positions, thereby enabling his battery to immediately open fire on the enemy.

2nd Lt. Maufe further saved what might have proved a most disastrous occurrence by extinguishing a fire in an advanced ammunition dump, caused by a heavy explosion, regardless of the risk he ran from the effects of gas shells which he knew were in the dump.

By his great promptitude, resource and entire disregard of his own personal safety, he set an exceptionally fine example to all ranks.