Captain Noel Chavasse was Medical Officer to the 1/10th Battalion (Liverpool Scottish) of the King's Liverpool Regiment during the First World War, and is the only soldier to have won the Victoria Cross (VC) twice in the same war. He was killed while earning his second VC – represented by adding a Bar to the original – in August 1917.
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 Captain N.G. Chavasse |
Born at Oxford in November 1884, Noel Chavasse and his twin brother Christopher were sons of the Anglican Bishop Dr. Frank Chavasse, who was to become Bishop of Liverpool. Noel and Christopher attended Liverpool College from 1900 to 1904 whilst their father was Bishop. They both enlisted in the Army at the start of the First World War in 1914, Christopher as an Army Chaplain and Noel as a Medical Officer.
Captain Chavasse was a hugely talented and popular Officer. A letter home from a fellow soldier states that Noel’s battalion had no cases of either trench foot or scabies – the two most common afflictions for soldiers in the trenches – as Noel made sure there were men ready to clean and dry the feet of soldiers returning from the trenches. He also organised regular baths in old wooden barrels for the soldiers.
Noel was awarded his first military honour, the Military Cross, in June 1915 at the battle of Hooge in France. He earned his first Victoria Cross at the battle of Guillemont in August 1916, for 'extreme bravery under enemy fire while tending to and rescuing the wounded'. His second VC (the Bar) was awarded following his death in battle at Wieltje, near Ypres, on 4 August 1917. Captain Chavasse had been seriously wounded in the head whilst tending to injured soldiers on the battlefield, yet continued to rescue fallen soldiers and tend to their injuries for four days before finally succumbing to his own injuries. He is buried in a British military grave outside Ypres.
Following his death, this poem by Canon H.D. Rawnsley was published in the Liverpool press:
Mourn for the dead we ill could spare
A man to think and do and dare
Dear Oxford’s gallant son,
His is the gain but ours the loss
Who, ere he won Victoria’s Cross,
Another Cross had won. | 
