William John Dickson Bradfield, or ‘Bill’, was a consultant surgeon at Kingston Hospital in Surrey. He was born in London on 23 June 1924, the only son and second child of John Ernest Bradfield, a businessman, and Marjorie Elizabeth née Dickson, the daughter of a silk merchant. Bill was educated at Dulwich College and Sandhurst. In 1942, he went on to St Thomas’s to study medicine as a Musgrave scholar, but interrupted his training to join the 5th Iniskilling Dragoon Guards. As a troop leader of a tank squadron in Normandy, he was awarded the Military Cross in 1944 for showing leadership and skill in command. He returned to St Thomas’s in 1946, where he was a keen and fearless rugby player. He was appointed consultant surgeon to Kingston Hospital, Surrey, in 1964, but remained honorary president of St Thomas’s rugby club. Bill rejoined the Army as a Territorial in 1950, retiring as a Lieutenant Colonel. He was honorary medical officer to the Commonwealth Ex-Services League from 1985, and worked with the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture. For a time he was a governor of the Star and Garter home for disabled soldiers, sailors and airman. He married Ellicott Hewes in 1971. They had no children. Throughout the years he kept in touch with the inhabitants of the two small French towns around which he saw action in 1944, and dignitaries from these towns attended his thanksgiving service. He died on 21 November 2003 from renal failure complicating carcinoma of the prostate.