Source: Michael Doyle Their Name Liveth For Evermore: The Great War Roll of Honour for Leicestershire and Rutland.
He was the son of Harry and Julia Stafford. He served in the South African Campaign, and held the King and Queen’s Medal. Before enlistment in “Kitchener’s Army” he had been employed at Messrs. Blackstone Company’s works in Stamford, Lincolnshire. He embarked for France on the 9th March 1915 and took part in the desperate fighting in the Richebourg – Festubert operations in which his regiment met with great losses. They lost eight officers and two hundred and fifty eight men in this battle, the brigade having four thousand and five hundred casualties in total. When it is realised that only two months before, the same battalions had suffered so terribly at Neuve Chapelle, one has to marvel at the iron nerve which enabled them to endure such a searching test. Harry was killed by a sniper on the Menin Road, north of Ypres as he was taking a message to headquarters. Two of his brothers, Jack and Mark, also went on foreign service, and it is a sad coincidence that Mark was the first Ketton man to be wounded, and Harry the first to be killed.