Lieutenant, Middlesex Regiment
Born: Staff
Died: July 16th 1943
Age at Death: 28
Killed in action, July 16th 1943
John was born on 19 April 1915 into an educated and well-heeled family: his father, Edward Brydges, was a barrister, and his mother, Edith (née Cooper), an Oxford graduate at a time when proportionately many fewer women were granted degrees than are today.
He joined the College to teach Classics, which he had studied at Wadham College, Oxford, earning a First – a much rarer feat in those days. Brydges was a useful man to have on the staff, since he played rugby and cricket and was a keen musician. He was the leader of the chorus in the Aeschylus play Agamemnon, a tragedy in which the commander of the Greek forces at Troy is murdered by his wife after returning from the war.
Brydges did not return from war. He served with the 1/7th Battalion of the Middlesex Regiment, and died during the victorious Allied campaign to liberate Sicily, in July 1943. Brydges is commemorated at the Cassino Memorial on the mainland of Italy.