Captain Proudfoot, RAMC - KIA 2nd September 1916

Captain Harold Heafford Proudfoot

Royal Army Medical Corps.

Attd 26th Bde Royal Field Artillary

Killed in Action on 2nd September 1916

Age: 27

Harold Proudfoot was born on the 21st August 1889 in Claremont, St Anne, Jamaica, the son of the Rev. James Proudfoot and his wife, Harriet Heafford Proudfoot. Harriet was born in Mountsorrel in 1859 and in 1901, when Harold was eleven, he lived with his mother and nine-year-old sister, Winifred, at 302 Main Street Mounstorrel.

Harold attended Quorn Grammar School and then in 1903 became a boarder at the Loughborough Grammar School.

In April 1911 the family had moved to 24 Frederick Street in Loughborough and Harold was, a Medical Student. He graduated from Edinburgh University in 1911.

Harold served as a Lietenant in 1915 and gazetted in April 1916. He served as Captain with the R.A.M.C. attached to the R.F.A.

In September 1916 Captain Proudfoot was in the Mametz area of France when he was killed, along with two other officers, by a bursting shell on Saturday, 2nd September, aged just 27.

On the 12th January 1917 probate in London gave his effects as £817 11s 4d, which was paid to his father who was then living at 279 Derby Road, Nottingham.

Captain Harold Heafford Proudfoot is buried at Dantzig Alley British Cemetery, Mametz VIII. I. 7  

He is remembered on the Loughborough War Memorial, St Peter’s Church Mountsorrel Roll of Honour, Edinburgh University’s Roll of Honour, Rawlins Old Quornians Association Roll of Honour, Loughborough Grammar School’s Roll of Honour and the Lenton War Memorial.

Sources: The National Archives                Loughborough Roll of Honour

© Dr Karen Ette