On the corner of Bracondale and Carrow Hill stands a large grey bricked Georgian house which is now owned by the Norwich Housing Trust and the building is divided into flats for the elderly...on the wall there is a war memorial which names 44 men who lost their lives in the First World War.
These men had been pupils or were connected with Bracondale School. They were, in the main, from middle-class families in the city and across the county who could afford to send their boys to the highly-regarded school on the hill to give them a better start in life.
The young, hopeful youth of Bracondale – known as 'The Peppermint Boys' - enjoyed the good life along with a first-class education. At the start of 1914 the future looked rosy, many were off to university or joining the family firm or farm. They had much to look forward to... but the dark clouds of war were looming.
A century on, many of us look at these memorials dotted around Norfolk. It seems such a long time ago. We read the names and want to know more. Who were they? Where did they came from and how did they die?
Thanks to Ed Bulpett, Rosemary Duff and the Bracondale History Group we now know about these boys who lost their lives on the blood-soaked battlefields during the Great War. They have done their homework well and produced a book they can be proud of which finally tells the story of The Peppermint Boys who went to war... and never returned.
This book seeks to discover the stories behind the names on a memorial and it also paints a vivid picture of what life was like at the school and in Norwich a century ago.
They also found that one of the boys, Captain Donald Cunnell, had shot down the notorious Red Baron before being killed.
Many of the Peppermint Boys joined the 8th Battalion of the Norfolk Regiment, created along with others in August and September 1914. They were in the thick of battles at the Somme and many others. Several were killed.
The total number of men raised by the Norfolk Regiment during the war was 32,375. More than one in six of these young men, 5,576, died.
The oldest, and the first of the Bracondale boys to die, was Captain Charles Norman Wheeler, born in 1881, the son of the headmaster, Dr Francis Darkins Wheeler.
He died aged 33 in January 1915, at Ypes, on his first day in the trenches. He was shot in the head as he valiantly tried to rescue a comrade. Charles had been working as a teacher in Liverpool where the boys called him 'Pop'.
One of the youngest was Flight Lt Myer Joseph Levine of Norwich, just 18 when he died in training in May 1918, in what may well have been the first mid-air collision.
Myer, probably inspired by the sight of aircraft flying from Mousehold, joined the Royal Flying Corps and a month later was killed in a crash over Lincolnshire.
His brother Cyril died from wounds received at Arras. Both are buried at Earlham Cemetery. Cyril's twin Victor survived the war.
Another flier who died was Captain Donald Charles Cunnell. He was born at Mount Pleasant, Norwich, and his father Charles was a brick manufacturer.
Just days before his death in 1917 he and his gunner Albert Woodridge had engaged with and shot down the notorious Manfred von Richthofen, known as the Red Baron.
The Red Baron survived the encounter but the injuries he received may well have played a part in his final demise.
There were several sets of brothers who died. Along with the Levines, there was Percy and Edmund Beck, Kenneth and Herbert Boyd, Sidney and Frederick Campling, George and William Dixon-Sutton and Cecil and Reginald Ellwood.
Most of the Peppermint Boys died on the Western Front, but three lost their lives in Palestine, one in Gallipoli, and one, Brevet Major Norman Walter Stevens of the Royal Army Medical Corps, was to die in India in July 1919.
To put these losses in context, 148 men were lost from the ward of St Marks, Lakenham, in which the school was situated.
• ROLL OF HONOUR
Captain Charles Norman Wheeler – South Lancashire Regiment – 7.01.1915 – Ypres
2 Lt Percy Latham Beck – Royal Monmouthshire Special Reserve – 6.03.1915 - Ypres
Lt Acting Adjutant Edmund Wallis Beck – Bedfordshire Regiment – 9.01.1916 – wounded 19.12.1915 near Ypres
Lt Henry Th ornton Miller – East Yorkshire Regiment – 6.05.1915 – Ypres
L/Cpl Kenneth Seymour Boyd – Hon Artillery Company – 30.06.1915 – Ypres
Cpl Herbert M Boyd – Hon Artillery Company
Lt David Alexander Glen – Royal Flying Corps – 29.12.1915 – near Cambrai
2 Lt Sydney Joseph Tillyard – Machine Gun Corps 5th Battalion Royal Berkshire – 2.03.1916 – Ypres
Pte Reginald William Burton – 24th London Regiment (County of London) Battalion – 16.05.1916
Pte Sidney Richard Campling – 8th Battalion Norfolk Regiment – 26.04.1916 – Somme
Cpl Frederick Leonard Campling – 8th Battalion Norfolk Regiment – 27.09.1916 – Somme
Sgt Lewis Betts Colman – 8th Battalion Norfolk Regiment – 19.07.1916 – Somme, battle for Delville Wood
Pte Douglas Theobald – 8th Battalion Norfolk Regiment – 19.07.1916 – Somme, battle for Delville Wood
L/Cpl Ivan James Howell – 20th Battalion Royal Fusiliers (London) – 21.08.1916 – Somme, battle for Delville Wood
2 Lt Thomas Whitty – 8th Battalion Norfolk Regiment – 5.10.1916 – Somme, Schwaben Redoubt
L/Cpl Wilfred Harvey Sutherland – 8th Battalion Norfolk Regiment – 5.10.1916 – Somme, Schwaben Redoubt
Pte Hylton Hayward May – 9th Battalion Essex Regiment – 12.10.1916 – Somme
2 Lt Humphrey Thorn – 7th Battalion Norfolk regiment – 13.10.1916 – Somme
Lt Stanley George Marriott – 2nd Field Company Royal Engineers – 21.10.1916 – Somme
Private Eric Spencer Wilkinson – 1/5th Northumberland Fusiliers – 14.11.1916 – Somme (Ancre)
Pte Cyril Isaac Levine – Machine Gun Corps, Essex Regiment – 27.05.1917 – Arras offensive
Flight Lt Myer Joseph Levine – Royal Flying Corps – 8.05.1918 – Stamford, Lincs (training)
Cpt Donald Charles Cunnell – 5th Battalion Hampshire Regiment, attached to Royal Flying Corps – 12.07.1917
L/Cpl Walter Wharton – 8th Battalion Royal Fusiliers – 3.05.1917 – Arras offensive
Lt Wilfrid Robert Williamson – 8th Battalion Norfolk Regiment – 14.08.1917 – Arras
2 Lt Francis Leslie Kerkham– 3rd Battalion Norfolk Regiment – 14.10.1917 – Arras
Lt George Harry Gordon Dye – 9th Battalion Norfolk Regiment – 21.11.1917 – Cambrai, Hindenburg Line
Cpt Hugh Salisbury Palmer – Royal Army Medical Corps – 25.04.1918 – Somme (Picardie)
Captain Percival Spurgeon – Army Service Corps – 18.05.1918
2 Lt William N Miles – Worcester Regiment / RAF – 24.07.1918 – Reading (training)
L/Cpl Ralph Herbert Colby – 12th Battalion Norfolk Regiment – 19.08.1918 – Outtersteene
Sgt Cecil Robert Ellwood – 19.08.1918 – France
Cpl Reginald Walpole Ellwood – 14.12.1915 – Gallipoli
Pte William Dixon-Sutton – 7th Battalion Norfolk Regiment – 9.08.1918 – Langensalza POW Camp
Private George Dixon-Sutton – 2nd Battalion Lancashire Fusiliers – 2.09.1918 – Drocourt Queant, Hindenburg Line
Private Herbert Horace Pond – 1/4th Battalion Norfolk Regiment – 19.04.1917 – Gaza
2 Lt Alec James Porter – 1/4th Battalion Norfolk regiment – 19.04.1917 – Gaza
Private Gilbert Geoffrey King – 12th Norfolk Yeomanry Regiment – 31.10.1917 – Beersheba
Brevet Major Norman Walter Stevens – Royal Medical Corps – 27.07.19 – India (Bombay)
Plus: E W Colman – C G Gould – R R King – F A Rogers – H D Rogers – S V Wheeler
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