John Thomas was a convalescent
patient at Hickwells and was probably one of the early arrivals there. His entry
in Nurse Oliver’s album reads:
6334 Pte J Thomas
2nd So Stafford Regt
Wounded at Ypres 15th Nov 1914
He shares this page with 33612
Sapper F Willmott, Royal Engineers and 88802 Driver George William Deer of the Royal Field Artillery.
John Thomas was born in Birmingham
in December 1881. Ten years later he appears on the 1891 census living at 97 Great Russell Street,
Birmingham. The household comprised Benjamin Thomas (head, married, 53, working
as a tin plate worker), his wife Elizabeth Thomas (aged 31, working as a button carder) and their three children: Elizabeth
(aged 14, working as a press worker), Albert Thomas (aged 12) and John (son, aged nine).
The family may have been living in factory accommodation as the family living next door included two pear button workers
and there are other press workers living in houses nearby.
Perhaps it was in order to escape
the inevitability of factory work that John (and probably Albert too), joined the army.
In 1901 John served with the 4th South Staffordshire (Militia) during the Boer War and was awarded the Queen’s South Africa Medal
with two clasps for Orange Free State and Cape Colony.
On 8th January 1902 he enlisted at Birmingham with the South Staffordshire Regiment. He
gave his aged as 20 years and one month and is described as five feet, six and one eighth inches tall with brown hair, hazel
eyes and a fresh complexion. He had a tattoo of a scroll with some initials on
it- possibly J W E Y –on his front right forearm. He was considered fit
by the Major from The Buffs who was the recruiting staff officer where John attested, and he was duly signed up. Five days later, his papers were approved correct and on the 18th January he travelled to the South Staffordshire
Regimental depot at Lichfield. His one year and 209 days of service with the 4th
South Staffordshire Militia was granted as reckonable service towards his Good Conduct Pay and army pension.
On 7th March 1902 he was appointed lance-corporal and on 13th June was granted Good Conduct Pay.
1903 however was to be his “annus horribilis”. On 5th January
he reverted to private for misconduct and on 21st February he went absent without leave until caught and remanded in civil
custody on 13th March. He remained in custody until 23rd march when District Court Martial convened at Lichfield found him guilty of desertion and convicted him to 56 days’ hard labour. He also
forfeited all of his former service (and awards) prior to conviction.
John returned to duty on 15th May
but by 6th June he had deserted again. This time his bid for freedom only lasted
four days and when the next District Court Martial convened at Lichfield on 25th June they sentenced him to six months hard labour.
He returned to duty on Christmas
Day 1903 and the following May was posted to the 1st Battalion. By August he
had clearly decided that army life was for him after all and he extended his service to eight years with the colours. He was posted to the 2nd Battalion on the 4th October and spent the next three years
serving with the battalion in India. On Christmas Day 1905 he was granted
class 3S pay at 6d and on 26th
May 1906 was awarded his first Good Conduct Badge. Having completed three years with no entries in the Regimental Defaulter Book he also elected to have his
former service (and awards) restored, that restoration to take effect from 26th May 1907.
In November 1907 he travelled abroad
with the regiment again, this time to South
Africa, remaining there until February
1910 when he returned home to Birmingham and joined the Army Reserve.
He married Eleanor Minnie Brown
on 30th October 1910 at St Saviours, Birmingham and on 16th September 1912, a daughter, Kathleen Elizabeth Minnie
Thomas, was born at Aston.
On 12th January 1914 his service papers state, “Section D. Army Reserve. Re-engaged” which presumably means that he extended his service on the Reserve. By this date he had completed 12 years service – eight years with the colours and four on the reserve
– and could have opted to leave the army altogether.
When war was declared however,
he was immediately recalled and on 5th
August 1914 was posted to the 3rd Battalion of the South Staffordshire
Regiment at Lichfield where he was mobilised.
“There
was plenty to do” recorded Brevet Major Dent in his diary in August 1914, (and recorded for public posterity in The
History of The South Staffordshire Regiment in 1923), “in putting on the finishing touches and shaking down the Reservists,
many of whom had not soldiered for six years, and were not used to the new rifle and equipment. We went for route marches, fired on the range and did Fire Direction.
The men were very cheerful; most of them spoke well of their employers who, in many cases, were given or had promised
to give their wives a liberal allowance during their absence. The general opinion
was that the war would be over by Christmas.”
While
Thomas and the other Reservists like him were being ‘shaken down’ in England, the battalion set sail for France
aboard the “Irrawaddy”, sharing the passage across with men from the 1st King’s (Liverpool) Regiment
and arriving at Le Havre on 13th August, just nine days after war had been declared.
The following month, his soldiering skills having been brushed up sufficiently, Private Thomas had joined them as part
of a draft. Arriving in France on September 11th, he had joined the battalion just as the battle to push the Germans out of their positions
on the high ground north of the Aisne was being launched.
“There
is something very terrible in being shelled by guns several miles away in a position from which it is impossible to make use
of the rifle” recorded Brevet-Major Dent from his billet in Moussy a couple of days into the battle. “To have to sit still all day and wait for shells to come is a great test of morale. There is no romance in sitting doing nothing and waiting to be blown sky high by a product of machinery.”
The
fighting on the heights above The Aisne had swiftly been followed by what would later be called, “The Race To The Sea”. With a fresh German advance down the coast from Ostend, the British line had extended further towards the sea beyond Ypres as both sides
sought to be the first to reach the channel ports. On October 17th the 1st
British Army Corps was rushed up from Moussy and on the 23rd, the battalion had attacked at Pilkem. Four days later Thomas and the South Staffords had moved up to a position facing the Passchendaele Ridge
and over the next fortnight the men had see-sawed back and forth as British attack was met by German counter attack and heavy
bombardment.
“We
have been hard at it hard and fast for three months without a break,” wrote Corporal Smith of the 2nd South Staffs
in a letter published in The Walsall Observer in November 1914. “When the
Germans have the cheek to attack us we knock spots off them and send them back a few hundred short of what they stared with. Three regiments of the Kaiser’s favourites – The Prussian Guards straight
from Berlin - were sent to smash our line but we smashed them instead. Physically, they were a fine lot of men – every one a six footer – but we settled them. Our generals call us the Staffordshire iron men, but we have smashed up all the enemy
we have been against.”
During
the period 1st to 9th November, the 2nd South Staffords were holding the most
advanced line of the British Army and were constantly shelled. At places, the
British line was no more than forty five yards away from the German front line and by now their ranks were quite severely
depleted and the men were in need of relief.
“This
terrific fight, lasting from October 20th until November 17th” recorded The History of The South Staffordshire Regiment,
“in which the British were opposed by Germans in the proportion of eight to one, will go down in history as one of the
most remarkable contests of the war… Even the Germans admitted the brilliance of the British achievement, and in their
official statement of the battle of Ypres, assert that they were under the impression that at least four British corps were
opposed to them, with special Machine Gun Corps; when, as a matter of fact, only two Corps were in France, and of machine
guns there were only two to a battalion. What misled the Germans in thinking
that we had so many machine guns was the wonderfully maintained rapid rifle fire of our men, all veterans, who had become
perfected in this art.”
The
problem was that by now, there were a good deal fewer veterans than there had been in August 1914. The fighting at Mons, on The Aisne and at Ypres had exacted
a heavy toll on the battalions that had taken part. Having missed out on Mons, John Thomas had played his full part in The Aisne and at Ypres and had emerged
from both without a scratch. He must have been congratulating himself on having
come through unscathed when he was wounded while waiting to be relieved at Becelaere by the 139th French Regiment on 15th
November. Shot through the left thigh, transferred to a hospital in Belgium or France, he was shipped back to England on 9th December.
John Thomas was discharged
from the army on 6th
September 1915 having served 13 years and 242
days. He gave his address on discharge as 51 Bridge Street (West), Hockley, Birmingham. His service papers note, initially, his
next of kin as his father, Benjamin Tingley of 68 Cowper Street, New Town Row, Birmingham
This was crossed out at some stage (presumably because his father had died) and his brother Albert, noted as a sergeant
with the Royal Warwickshire Regiment and living at Bracebridge Street, Birmingham, is written in its place. Albert’s name in turn was crossed out when John married Eleanor Brown in 1910.
Sources and Acknowledgements
- 1891 Census of England and Wales
- The National Archives: Medal Index Card
- The National Archives: Medal Roll: British War & Victory
Medals: F/101/ B Page 88: WO 329/
- The National Archives: Medal Roll: 1914 Star: Roll F/2/5 Page 98: WO 329/2456
- The National Archives: Medal Roll; Silver War Badge: Roll
F/71: WO 329/3051
- John Thomas’s partial service record exists at The National Archives; reference: WO 364/4154
- History of The South Staffordshire Regiment, 1923
- The Walsall Observer
Read more about John Thomas in Part 6 of The Hospital Way
