 A FIRST World War hero’s letter from the trenches was sold at auction yesterday for more than £1,000. Army medic Captain Noel Chavasse, an Olympic athlete and the son of the Bishop of Liverpool, was the only soldier to receive two Victoria Cross medals for bravery during the Great War. The first came after the wounded Chavasse, an old boy of Liverpool College, saved 20 lives by tending to casualties in front of German trenches at Guillemot, on the Somme, in August 1916. The second was bestowed after he died, aged 32, at Ypres, in 1917. He was again severely injured but spent two days tending to injured men in a captured German blockhouse, which he repeatedly left under fire to search for and carry back casualties. Captain Chavasse, who served with the 10th (Liverpool Scottish) Battalion of the King’s Regiment, was eventually killed when a shell landed inside the dugout. A letter from Chavasse to an old schoolfriend, John Tomlinson, was sold at auction yesterday to a private bidder for £1,040, after two telephone bidders had battled it out. In the letter, dated June, 1916, and addressed to “My dear Tomlinson”, Chavasse wrote: “I have been out 19 months now, and have never had a day’s sickness, but all the other officers who came out with us in Oct, 1914, have gone, either dead, wounded or sick.” He also thanks his friend for “praying for my safety“, but insists: “I am very glad and very proud to think that you and I are actually fighting for our country, because I love old England and the British Empire, and I think it fine to fight for her and a great honour to die for her. “And I am glad to think that we are not only fighting for England but are also fighting to stop a swinish nation making slaves of us all, and are protecting the weak against the strong.” John Crane, of Liverpool-based auctioneers Cato Crane, said: “It was a great honour to have the opportunity to sell a letter from a man who means so much to the people of Liverpool. “I was very satisfied with the price, particularly considering the letter was not in mint condition and not sent to a person of national importance.” | 
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