Sydney Milsom Banfield

On 2 May 1914, Sydney Banfield was one of the better performed players in Dudley Under 18s victory over East Greta. He was 15 years of age. Seventeen months later, two weeks short of his 17th birthday, he enlisted. He wrote on the enlistment form that he was 21. He was severely wounded twice in France (jaw 1917, forearm 1918) and promoted from Private to Sergeant. By the time he returned to Dudley having survived the war he was still only 20 years of age. Sydney Banfield went on to become the President of the Dudley School Of Arts in 1924. In 1944, he lost his only child, Kenneth, in an military aircraft accident in England. He died in Newcastle in 1989, at the age of 90.