Major General William Brook Purdon’s distinctive career. In today’s Roll – James Taylor, a Royal Artillery gunner from Ballymoney serving with a Maritime regiment and who most likely died at sea, is named on Portsmouth Naval Memorial. The war graves of two RAF men William Freeman from Ballycastle and Robert Irvine from Belfast are in Egypt and South Africa. On this day in 1914 Cdr Henry Peel Ritchie from HMS Goliath, was awarded the first Royal Navy Victoria Cross of WW1. In 1916, a lone German warplane appears in the skies over London and drops six bombs near Victoria Station. Ten casualties are reported. It is the first raid on the city by a fixed-wing aircraft; it won’t be the last.
