2nd Lieut. Edmund Fisher (RFA)

Just over two months after he was struck down by appendicitis in France, Edmund Fisher has died, on Easter Sunday, leaving a widow with five sons and two daughters.

In 1915, being well over military age and ineligible for active service, he went out as an orderly to the Hôpital Temporaire d’Arc-en-Barrois, organized by Miss Bromley-Martin and her sisters for French soldiers, and was there through the summer, mainly helping with X-ray work.

Later he succeeded in being accepted for active service, and having completed his training for the RFA, crossed to France on June 5th 1917. He took part in the fighting in the Ypres salient and again in the battle of Cambrai.

He was generally employed to look after camps of mules and horses and to send and often accompany ammunition to the batteries.

The Museum

Edmund had been an architect before the war. He designed our own Museum and carpenter’s shop – the Maurice Church Memorial – and was also responsible for the Maitland Building at Somerville College, now being used by wounded officers. His brother, The Rt. Hon. HAL Fisher, currently President of the Board of Education, was at the time President of the Somerville College Council.

Edmund was a good rider to hounds and at one time master of a pack of beagles. Indeed, no form of country sport was alien to him.

In conversation he was pithy and humorous, in judgement always independent, in observation alert.

The war has claimed no gentler or more spirited victim.