50077 PRIVATE ARTHUR THOMAS
1ST BATTALION SUFFOLK REGIMENT
DIED OF INFLUENZA
1ST OCTOBER 1918
AGE 30 YEARS
Arthur Thomas was the older of another pair of brothers with Halesworth connections who lost their lives during World War One. He was born, to quote a phrase of that time, “on the wrong side of the blanket” (illegitimate) on 21st July 1888 with his parents marrying some five months later on 29th November 1883. His Welsh-born father, Thomas Morgan Thomas, had, from a young age, been employed by the London and Provincial Bank. He, with his wife Mary (née Shibley), spent several of their early years of marriage moving from one branch of the bank to another as Thomas advanced in seniority within the bank. At the time of Arthur’s birth his father and mother were living in Harleston, Norfolk where his father held the position of a bank cashier. The census for 1901 lists them as now living in North Walsham also in Norfolk, Thomas having gained promotion to Bank Manager. Their family had now grown to four children with Arthur, aged thirteen years, attending Beccles College, no doubt in line with his father’s new status. While attending the privately-run school he gained a reputation as a fine all-round athlete, also a favourite with his classmates. By 1911 the family had moved once more, with Thomas now the bank manager at the Halesworth branch and living in the adjacent Bank House at No.43 Thoroughfare. By this time Arthur had completed his education and from 1910 he was employed as a clerk for the Commercial Union Insurance Company at their offices in the Suffolk county town of Ipswich, while boarding with the Pepper family at their home in St Helens Street.
At the commencement of the Great War in 1914 Arthur continued to work and live in Ipswich with regular well-paid employment. Also after hearing of the loss of his younger brother Edward, killed in action during the battle of Neuve Chapelle in March 1915, he did not volunteer to serve in the armed forces. Eventually, after the introduction of conscription in January 1916, Arthur was called to serve in the army. In July 1916 he enlisted to serve as a Private Soldier in the Suffolk Regiment with the service number of 23517. He then spent the next three months receiving his basic training in the large military garrison at Colchester in Essex. In October 1916, now considered to be a trained soldier, he received a new regimental number of 50077 and a posting to join the 1st Battalion, Suffolk Regiment. He then joined a large draft of reinforcements being transported to Macedonia in the Balkans. From there he would have been despatched to join the 1st Suffolks who at that time were engaged in the Salonika campaign in the north of Greece. The Allied nations had begun military actions in 1915 to support the Greek government in their fight against what were known as the Central Powers of Bulgaria, Austro-Hungarian, and Turkey, all of whom were supported by the Germans, who were then intent on invading the country of Serbia. This then would have enabled them to extend their perceived empire south to the Aegean sea and beyond. The British element of the combined international army was known as the British Salonika Force (B.S.F.) which, by late 1916 to early 1917, had grown into six full infantry division as well as supporting units that included two squadrons of the Royal Flying Corps which, from 1st April 1918, had become the completely new independent formation of the Royal Air Force, then breaking its ties with the British Army. Those units of the B.S.F. that would eventually total over two hundred thousand soldiers would suffer in many ways far more than their comrades fighting on the Western Front as the variations in climate in the region would go from freezing winters to blistering summers. These extremes of climate would then bring with it cases of frost bite and exposure in the winter months, with many thousands of men suffering from malaria and other heat-related illnesses in the hotter months. Arthur joined what remained of a pre-war regular army battalion the 1st Suffolks, then serving in the 28th Division. At the time of his joining the battalion, probably at some time in early November 1916, they had already served almost a year in the region and had fought in several actions, including a major withdrawal, as the Allied forces had been driven back some distance before being able to form a new line of defence. For Arthur his first action was probably in early 1917 when the 1st Suffolks cooperated with a battalion of the Northumberland Fusiliers and a troop of mounted Derbyshire Yeomanry as they carried out raids on Bulgarian positions on the outskirts of the village of Kupri. The attack was entirely successful, with several of the enemy killed and twenty-nine prisoners taken. This action would have been typical of the type of warfare that Arthur experienced over the coming eighteen months, involving fighting over impassable terrain in conditions of climate which would bring with them illnesses and diseases in the extreme. By the month of September 1918 the war against the Bulgarians and the forces of the Central Powers was coming to an end, with them asking for an armistice on the 30th September. From that day hostilities ceased. At that time the manpower strength of the 1st Suffolks had been reduced to a little above a third of their war establishment of eight to nine hundred Officers and men. The regimental history of the Suffolk Regiment during World War One published in 1928 shows that two thirds of the 1st Suffolk’s manpower were suffering from influenza, which had now been classified as a pandemic, or malaria. Arthur was one of those. He finally passed away the day after the cessation of hostilities on 1st October 1918 in one of the three British field hospitals that had been set up to treat soldiers suffering from both wounds and illness near the 16th Corps headquarters in Salonika. After his death he was laid to rest with another five hundred and eighty-eight of his comrades in the Kirechkoi–Hortakoi, British Military Cemetery, Greece. So ended another life of one of those men associated with Halesworth who had given his all during the Great War, not by any enemy shot or shell but by a pandemic that would kill millions of people worldwide.
The Halesworth Times newspaper of 15th October 1918, in which his parents announced Arthur’s death, also spoke of their other son, Edward, who had been killed in 1915 (see his story), and of their other two sons who remained serving: Lieutenant Morris Thomas, who had been in Egypt for three years serving in the Army Service Corps. and Cadet Llewelyn Thomas who at that time had been undergoing training in the Royal Air Force Cadet Corps.
At the settling of Arthur’s accounts, his parents were no doubt considered too well off financially to receive a pension, but having been listed as his next-of-kin Mary his mother was awarded a war gratuity of £34.12s.11d (£34.65p), which would have been considered a considerable sum of money at that time. As well as her financial awards she would also been able to claim Arthur’s medal pair of the British War and Victory medals and his named memorial plaque and scroll .
The location of these is unknown.
Post War this card shows the town’s Barclays Bank that had previously been the London & Provincial Bank where Edward’s father had been the manager.