Today we remember Harold Godfrey Bache on the 100th Anniversary of him becoming the sixth Worcestershire CCC player to be killed in action during the First World War.
Second Lieutenant Bache of the 10th Battalion, Lancashire Fusiliers, died on February 16 at the Comines Canal Bank, Ypres, in Belgium.
This was less than a mile from where another Worcestershire CCC player, BP Nevile, was killed five days earlier.
Bache played 20 first-class matches between 1907 and 1910, 17 of them for Worcestershire.
Born in Churchill, Worcestershire, Bache made his first-class debut for Worcestershire against Surrey at Worcester late in the 1907 season.
The following season he played twice for the County and then made nine appearances in 1909 and eight in 1910.
His top score of 36 was made against Middlesex at Lord's in 1910. Later in the same season against the same opposition, he took two of his three career wickets in Patsy Hendren and Jack Hearne. His other wicket had been that of Sussex's Robert Relf in 1909.
‘HG’ was a talented all-round sportsman and academic. He played tennis at Wimbledon and for Cambridge University and football for Corinthians, West Bromwich Albion, England Amateurs, and captained Cambridge University.
There is a blue plaque Commemorating Harold Bache, in the shadow of Tony Brown’s statue at The Hawthorns, and memorials at Caius College Cambridge and the Menin Gate (Panel 33), Ypres.
The Bache Memorial Prize is still awarded on Speech Day each year at King Edward VI School, Birmingham.
For more details about Harold Bache’s life and death, see page 172 of Pears 150 the life and times of WCCC 1865-2014.
Anyone wanting to purchase the book, priced £28, during the winter months, please leave contact details with reception at New Road.
