Francis Cotterell, known as Frank, was the eldest son of Samuel and Frances Cotterell. His father farmed land on Willersey Hill above Broadway and owned The Fish Inn at the top of Fish Hill. Frank enlisted with the Warwickshire Yeomanry at the beginning of the First World War and was posted to Egypt in April 1915 before being transferred to Gallipoli in the middle of August.
The Warwickshire Yeomanry arrived at Suvla Bay on the 18th August and during the Battle of Scimitar Hill, Frank was injured, receiving a gunshot wound to the wrist. By the end of the month, Frank had been evacuated from Gallipoli to the 15th General Hospital in Alexandria and was later posted home to recuperate. Whilst in hospital in Egypt, Frank wrote that his “wound was not going on as well as it should, the weather being too hot for wounds” and that he could not sleep.
At the end of the war Frank returned home and married Minnie Meadows in 1920. Frank died, aged 80, in 1965.
Broadway Remembers 