Maurice Frederick GODDARD

Royal Army Service Corps cap badge.

Maurice Goddard was born on 10 October 1910 at 15 Summerfield, New Hinksey, and baptised just over a month later at St Laurence’s Church in the nearby village of South Hinksey. He was the second of the seven children of Frederick and Nellie Goddard. Frederick, who had been born in Tackley Place in north Jericho, worked as a postman. Nellie (née Pepper) was the daughter of a gardener and came originally from Melbourne in Cambridgeshire. By her early twenties she had moved to Oxford and was working as a cook in a large house on Rawlinson Road in North Oxford. She and Frederick married at the church of St Peter in the East (on Queen’s Lane, now the college library of St Edmund Hall) in 1907. They moved to 15 Summerfield in New Hinksey and their first son Ronald was born there in 1909. Maurice followed in 1910; by the time of the 1911 census the family had moved to 37 Edith Road, Grandpont. The other five Goddard children were born there: Aubrey (born 1912), Denis (1914), Patrick (1918), Barbara (1920), and Josephine (1923). Frederick and Nellie were to stay at this address for the rest of their lives.

Maurice attended Southfield School in Glanville Road, East Oxford (now Oxford Spires Academy); in March 1930, when he was nineteen, he followed his father Frederick into a job in the postal service. In his spare time he was secretary of the Oxford branch of the Cyclists Touring Club, and a prominent member of the Youth Hostels Association.

Maurice's father Frederick retired in August 1936, receiving an annual pension of £160 3s 7d (about £9,000 in today's money) from his employer the General Post Office. He had worked as a postman for almost forty years, since he was nineteen, and was awarded the Imperial Service Medal for long service. He died the following year, aged 57; his funeral service was at St Matthew’s Church and he was buried in Wolvercote Cemetery.

In the 1939 register, taken on 29 September, four weeks after the outbreak of the Second World War, Maurice (then aged 28) was working as a ‘postman – van driver’ and living at home at 37 Edith Road with his widowed mother Nellie and three of his younger siblings: Patrick (aged 21, working as a haulage clerk); Barbara (18, an assistant in a fishing tackle shop); and Josephine (15, an assistant in a grocer’s shop).

Thereafter, Maurice joined the Royal Army Service Corps as a Driver, service number T/221952. He served in Greece and Crete before being deployed to Libya. There, he was likely to have been involved in the Siege of Tobruk, a Mediterranean port with a strategically-important deep water harbour. In January 1941 Tobruk was captured from the Italians by British forces, and the harbour used for the reception of supplies and reinforcements. However, when German forces under the command of Field Marshall Erwin Rommel commenced their drive across eastern Libya towards Suez, they attempted to take Tobruk, and the resulting siege lasted from 11 April to 10 December 1941. During this time the Axis (including German) forces were driven back, but they recovered far more quickly than was expected and by early February the Allied (including British) forces were in retreat. Maurice died during this period, on 27 February 1942; he was 31.

Rommel’s forces captured Tobruk on 21 June 1942, but it was retaken five months later by the British Eighth Army in their final sweep along the North African coast into Tunisia.

Maurice was buried at the Tobruk War Cemetery. His gravestone carries the inscription “Come unto me / All ye that labour / And are heavy-laden / And I will give you rest”. As well as being commemorated on the war memorial in his home parish of St Matthew’s in Grandpont, he is also (together with Kenneth Cole) one of the sixteen Post Office employees named on the Oxford Post Office Second World War memorial which is in the sorting office in Oxpens. Maurice's name is on the Oxford City Second World War Roll of Honour in the church of St Michael at the Northgate on Cornmarket. He is also remembered on the war memorial of Southfield School (now Oxford Spires Academy) on Glanville Road in East Oxford. Memorial panels to former pupils who died in the war were unveiled on 24 June 1946, and a commemoration service was held at the church of St Martin & All Saints (now the library of Lincoln College) the following Sunday. Another of our 24 Men of Grandpont and Cold Harbour, Ron Williams, attended Southfield School (though he was ten years younger than Maurice) and so he is also named on the school's memorial.

Maurice left an estate worth £239 1s 4d (about £10,500 in today's money) to his mother Nellie, and a payment of £163 10s 10d was made to her by Maurice’s employer, the General Post Office. Nellie died in March 1945, two months before the end of the Second World War, aged 65. She was buried at Wolvercote Cemetery with her husband Frederick.

Research by Emma Hill.

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