Biography:
John Henry Tandy Liddell was born 18 February 1892, the son of John Liddell M.D. and Annie Louisa Liddell of Harrogate.
He came to Winchester College from Summerfields, Oxford, in May 1904 and was in I House, Turner's, under Revd Bather. He left Winchester in the spring of 1907 and the next we know of him is when he took his degree at Pembroke College, Oxford in 1913. At the outbreak of war, he was in London studying for the Bar.
Liddell obtained a commission on 8 August 1914, in the King's Royal Rifle Corps and accompanied his battalion to France early in September. He was wounded during the First Battle of Ypres. He re-joined 1KRRC, and was involved in fighting on the Somme, where, in mid November, the Fifth Army launched an offensive on a nine-thousand yard front astride the Ancre between Thiepval and Serre. The attack – the last phase of the 1916 Battle of the Somme – began on 13 November , with 1KRRC in reserve immediately south of Serre. The next day, the attack continued, and this time 99 Brigade was tasked to capture Munich Trench. At 0600 the barrage commenced and 1KRRC began to advance into the darkness and thick mist. Over unfamiliar ground, the unit soon lost its direction. One group of four officers and eighty men entered a communication trench running into Munich Trench at right angles, and occupied it thinking that they had reached their objective. Realizing their mistake, they tried to move along into Munich Trench, but found that their own artillery barrage had not lifted and that further progress was impossible. They retreated with sixty-four prisoners, and the battalion as a whole dug in along a sunken road northeast of Beaumont Hamel, before withdrawing on the night of 15 November.
Liddell died on 17 November 1916 as a result of wounds sustained in the attack on 14 November.