Lieutenant-Colonel Bill Bradford
5th Battalion, The Black Watch

Owing to severe casualties in past fighting the bn under Lt Col Bradford’s comd has los most of its key personnel and a great deal of extra work descended on him. The fact that his bn carried out its tasks so brilliantly is entirely due to the able leadership and energy of Lt Col Bradford who was at all times an inspiration and example to his officers and men.

(D.S.O. citation, 2 Sep 1944)

Born on 15 October 1912 in London, Berenger Colborne Bradford was educated at Eton College and the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. He was commissioned with the Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment) in 1932, later serving in India and the Sudan. As a captain and adjutant with the 1st Battalion, he was taken prisoner along with the rest of the 51st Division when surrounded by German forces at St Valéry on 12 June 1940. He slipped away from the prisoner-of-war march a week later.

He acquired civilian clothes and headed for the coast only to discover this route had been cut off. Travelling south by bicycle and aided by French civilians and Resistance members, Bradford reached the Pyrenees. With his attempts to cross the Spanish border thwarted, he was arrested by Vichy police and interned with other British escapees in Marseilles. In late October 1940, he stowed away on a boat bound for Algiers, where he was again arrested and imprisoned by Vichy authorities.

In June 1941, a year after his surrender and first escape, Bradford resolved to finally get home. He and two French companions, a communist and a Jew, set out on a small boat for Gibraltar despite none having any sailing experience. After eight days and over 500 miles, the trio were picked up by a Royal Navy patrol off the coast of Gibraltar. By July 1941, Bradford was back in Scotland and joined the 5th Battalion, Black Watch in the reconstituted 51st Division.

During the North African, campaign, he earned the Military Cross as brigade major for the 154th Infantry Brigade at El Alamein and Akarit: “Apart from these battles, he has been noticed time and again for his courage and cheerfulness in action, and his imperturbability under fire; and he has always set a fine example of courage and coolness to the HQ.” Following the Sicily campaign in July-August 1943, Bradford and the battalion returned to the United Kingdom along with 51st Division.

In preparation for Operation Overlord, Bradford was appointed liaison officer between General Miles Demsey’s British Second Army and General Omar Bradley’s First US Army. He went ashore on Omaha Beach days after the landings of 6 June 1944. At the end of July, Bradford returned to the 5th Black Watch, succeeding his friend Lieutenant-Colonel Chick Thomson, who had been in command since just after El Alamein. The long tenure had evidently worn him down and he experienced several difficulties and setbacks in the course of the new campaign. In his regimental history of the Black Watch, Bernard Fergusson wrote of the change in command: “There can rarely have been a hand-over of a battalion with less interruption to personality, prestige and policy.”

During the Falaise offensive, on the night of 18 August, an enemy strike hit 5th Battalion command post. Although wounded, Bradford refused evacuation and continued the advance, earning the D.S.O. He received a Bar for “careful planning and fearless direction” of another nighttime attack on 20/21 February 1945. One subordinate recalled of his leadership: “It’s amazing how many things the average Battalion Commander has to take into consideration — ours (Col. Bradford, a grand person) showed a remarkable grasp at his orders group which we attended yesterday afternoon.” (Jack Swaab, Field of Fire, 265)

After an appointment to GSO1, HQ British Army of the Rhine in February 1946, Bradford held several postwar commands with the Black Watch and Airborne division. He retired as a brigadier to his Kincardine estate in 1959. 

Bradford died on 4 March 1996 and is buried at Kincardine Castle.