Thomas Weller (1894-1916)

Post date: Jan 19, 2016 10:27:52 PM

Thomas John was born in 1894 at Boxley to James and Sarah Weller. In 1901 they were living at The Hermitage (near Fuller's Corner), Wateringbury where James was a Carter on the farm. Thomas was the youngest of 4 children and, although not shown by the census, was probably then at Wateringbury School. The youngest two children had been born at Boxley and the eldest two at Marden, with which the family obviously maintained connections as two lodgers, farm labourers by occupation, were also both born in Marden. By 1911 the parents had moved to the High Street in West Malling with just two children then at home - Thomas aged 17 was an errand boy. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission lists Thomas' elder brother Walter as living in 1916 at New Pound, Mereworth.

Thomas' personal service record is not available but he is believed to have enlisted in Chatham. His service number was 16378 and he was in the 2nd Battalion of the Grenadier Guards.

By the time of his death on 15th September 1916, aged 22, during the Somme Offensive he had been promoted to Lance Corporal. He is commemorated on pier and face 8D of the Thiepval Memorial.

His battalion's War Diary (available at The National Archives, reference WO-95-1215), part of the 1st Guard's Brigade, Guards Division, has the following typewritten narrative attached to it:

Narrative of events from Sept. 13th -17th, 1916.

On 13th Sept. the Battalion was holding the Northern Sector of the GINCHY¹Line. Orders were received that we were to straighten the Line by an attack that night in order to form a good jumping off place for the big attack on the 15th. No. 4 Company was detailed for this and no. 2 Company were ordered to protect their left flank and join up with them. The operation was a difficult one as the left of the attack had to advance further than the right in order to form a line facing N.E.; there was also a bright moon which showed up our attacking party very plainly. Thirty or forty shrapnel were fired at the German trench just north of the Orchard, but did very little good and the Germans were on the alert and met No.4 Company under 2/Lieut. T.W. Minchin with heavy rifle and machine gun fire causing some casualties. The party cleared the Orchard killing some Germans who were in shell-holes and dug in, a line to the edge of the Orchard, after a fruitless attempt to push on. They were shot at heavily the whole time but completed their trench before morning.

On the 14th the whole of the Battalion Front was bombarded all day with 4.5 and 5.9 shells and the line was much knocked about and the Companies all rather shaken. We were relieved that night by the 2nd and 3rd Battalions Coldstream Guards and went into bivouac in shell holes a few hundred yards behind GINCHY where rations were given out and rum issued. A bitterly cold night and no great coats.

At 6.20 a.m. on 15th, our bombardment began and we moved off in two lines of platoon blobs. The German barrage dropped before we reached GINCHY and we went through the middle of it, on the whole losing extraordinary few men, considering the intensity of the fire. At about 6.40 a.m. we halted in GINCHY, luckily the bulk of the barrage was on the south edge but we lost a good many men and Captain M. K. A. Lloyd.

About twenty minutes later we decided to push on out and clear of GINCHY and remain for a short time in shell holes. We saw nothing of the Coldstream battalions. At 7.20 a.m. we moved on towards our objective with our right on the sunken road . We came at once under machine gun fire from our left front and after a while rifle fire from our right and a good many men went down including several officers. The left companies were held up by rifle fire from the GREEN LINE, which appeared to be held strongly from about T.8.d.3.8 to T.8.z.8.4. The right companies pushed on into the GREEN LINE² and our right was in touch with some of the 3rd Battalion Grenadier Guards, 2nd Guards Brigade; who were attempting to stop the Germans from turning their right flank. One platoon of No.1 company and a machine gun was rushed over and succeeded in forming a defensive flank and preventing the Germans, of whom there were a considerable number, from working up behind us. The Division on our right had apparently failed and the Germans were very thick in their trenches and were shooting hard at us. We lost the bulk of our casualties during this period. The centre of the Battalion then rushed a part of the GREEN LINE and bayoneted all the Germans they found. The left were unable to get on. almost as soon as the centre got in the Germans began bombing down the trench very strongly having three of four men throwing our bombers³ could not stop them and Company Sgt. Major J. Norton who was lying out by the wire with some men rushed them and stopped the attack for the time. All available bombs were then collected and a party began to work up the trench but was met by a furious bomb attack and driven back some way, most of the bombers being knocked out. We were forced back some way and to relieve the pressure, as the men were rather overwhelmed by the shower of bombs, and all British Bombs had been finished, Captain G.C.F. Harcourt-Vernon organized and led a bayonet charge over the top, killing the bombing party and driving the remainder back, 40 or 50 of whom surrendered.

Our bombing party worked north along the trench until the Germans broke and ran across the open towards the BLUE LINE. Having cleared the trench for some awy we began to consolidate. Two small parties of Germans tried to enter the trench on the left but were dealt with by our Lewis Guns.

During the evening our troops retired from the BLUE LINE across our front followed at not more than a hundred yards by a large body of Germans. They were shot at and lay down in the grass. As it was getting dark it was difficult to see them and fire was ordered to be withheld in the hope that they would attack as they were being continually reinforced.

Nothing happened, however, during the night.

On the 16th we were very heavily shelled for most of the day from the front and direct enfilade from the left. We were shot at continually from our right rear, but this eased after our snipers has killed a good many.

We were relieved on the 17th about 9.00 a.m. by the 15th K.R.R..

(Sd) C. de Crespigny

Lieutenant Colonel

Commanding 2nd Battalion Grenadier Guards

19/9/16

Elsewhere in War Diary the O.R. casualties during operations of 13-16 September 1916 are recorded as : Killed 98; Died of wounds 16; Wounded 232; Missing 13.

Harold MacMillan who was serving as a captain in the 3rd Grenadier Guards, who fought alongside Thomas' 2nd battalion, was severely wounded in this action at Ginchy on 15th September and Raymond Asquith, son of the Prime Minister, also in the 3rd Battalion of Grenadier Guards, was killed in this action on the same day as Thomas. The Genadier Guards are the senior infantry regiment in the British army. Two Victoria Crosses were awarded in respect of this action, to L/Sgt. F. McNess of 1st Scots Guards and to B/Lt Col J.V. Campbell of 3rd Coldstream Guards.

Notes:

1. Ginchy a village on junction of 6 roads, close to Delville Wood, east of Longueval and north east of Guillemont. The village had changed hands frequently in fighting from 3rd September, until it was finally captured on 9th September.

2. Green Line: the plan had been for the three Guards brigades to take 4 lines of objectives, which all had a different colour code: Green, Brown, Blue and Red. These would then give them possession of Flers Ridge.

3. Bombers and bombs were the terms used in WWI for grenade throwers and grenades; being able to lob a bomb into an enemy trench dugout or machine gun post became an important part of trench warfare. Before 1916 British bombs were rather a hotchpotch of makeshift devices, several of which were very unsafe. By this time the No 5. Mills Bomb had been introduced which was of a spring-mechanism type (requiring removal of a pin) and generally safer (for the user) than the earlier percussion (exploded on hitting ground or other solid object) or ignition (fuse lit by match etc.) types. The greatest grenade battle of the war had just taken place on Pozieres Heights (26-27 July 1916) between the Australians with British support and the Germans in which 15,000 bombs were thrown in one night. The No 5 Mills Bomb weighed about 1.5 lb and had a segmented iron case. When the pin was removed the lever was kept down by the thrower's hand and only when thrown did lever release a spring which hit the detonating cap. Bombers were trained initially by the Royal Engineers on a brigade basis but then deployed at a battalion level.