Pte 48405 Thomas McAdam

• Age: 19
• From: Walton Liverpool
• Regiment: The King's (Liverpool Regiment) 19th Btn
• K.I.A Monday 9th April 1917
• Commemorated at: St Martin Calvaire Brit Cem
  Panel Ref: I.A.16

Thomas McAdam was born on 13th June 1897 in Walton, Liverpool and was the son of James McAdam and his wife Emma Cicil (nee Young) who were married in 1893 at St Mary, Edge Hill. He was baptised on the 18th July 1897 at Holy Trinity, Walton Breck, parents address 42 Oakfield Rd.

At the time of the 1901 census, Thomas aged 3 was living with his maternal grandparents James and Ellen Young and their children at 1, Monastery Road, Walton. He’s possibly living there temporarily as the census return for his parents show that his mother gave birth to a baby son, Walter, just 5 days before. The couple also had a daughter Cicil aged 7 and two other sons William aged 5 and John aged 2.

The 1911 census records James and Emma – called Cicil, were living at 81 Premier Street, Everton. James aged 39, was working as a grain receiver in a grain warehouse, mother is aged 37, they have been married for 18 years and have 7 children and was born in Woolwich, London. All seven of their children are living at home: Cicil 17, William 15 who was a railway clerk, Thomas 13, John 12 and Walter 10 who were all at school, Elsie aged 6, and Rachel aged 3.

Thomas enlisted in Liverpool originally joining the 18th Battalion of The King's Liverpool Regiment but was serving in the 19th Battalion KLR as Private No 48405 when he was killed in action on the 09th April 1917, aged 19.

Everard Wyrall records the events of the day for the 17th, 19th and 20th Battalions in Volume 2 of his History of the King's Regiment (Liverpool).

The 89th Brigade formed up for the attack with the 19th King's on the right and the 20th King’s on the left. The 17th King’s supplied the “mopping up" parties and he 2nd Bedfords were in close support.

It was just after 3pm when the advance began “According to scheduled time the waves advanced in good style and with determination; everyone was cheerful and in the best of spirits”

That advance is described by others as magnificent. From the OP’s the observing officers saw a wonderful sight – long lines of men advancing steadily up a long and gradual slope towards the enemy’ front line. Then suddenly they disappeared. The observers quite pardonably, imagined that the German front line had fallen into the hands of the assaulting troops and that the latter were on the way to the enemy’s support line. Alas something very different had happened. When the advancing troops had reached the summit of the long slope up which they advanced the ground suddenly dipped before the German front line , and when the observing officers thought they were already in the Bosche lines they had not, as a matter of fact, even reached the wire. What the observers took to be the front line was really the support line; the front line could not be seen - it lay just behind the crest of that slight rise in the ground.

The attacking waves of the 19th King’s got within 100 yards of the German wire but were then held up. They were faced by three belts of entanglements, practically untouched by our artillery, and nothing could be done but to dig in or else take shelter in the many shell- shell-with which “No Man’s Land" was pitted. By this time the battalion’s losses were very heavy, and when darkness fell “A" and “B" Companies (about 140 in all) lay in shell-holes, two or three hundred yards north east of St. Martin, but just south of the Cojeul River, and “C" and “D" Companies (140 all ranks) were along the river bank, but on the northern side about 150 yards north east of St. Martin.

The first waves of the 20th King’ advanced at 3.7pm. At 4pm Lieut Beaumont, commanding “A" Company, reported that he had had some forty casualties in passing through the enemy’s barrage. The next message, timed 4.40pm, stated that the position of the battalion at that period was on a crest in front of the enemy’s wire and about 100 yards from it. On the right the 21st Division was observed to have penetrated the enemy’s front line, but in the left the right Battalion of the 21st Brigade (the Wilts) was on the St. Martin- Neuville Vitasse road; the left flank of the 20th King's was, therefore, “ in the air”.

Urgent messages were sent up from Battalion Headquarters to “push on, keeping in touch with right” But little else could be accomplished until those formidable belts of wire had been cut sufficiently to allow the rapid passage of the attacking troops, headed by their bombers.

At 9:30 that night 89th Brigade Headquarters ordered both the 19th and 20th Battalions to withdraw, the former to the two sunken roads running south east from St. Martin, the latter to north west of St. Martin; the guns had been ordered to cut the enemy’s wire during the night in preparation for another attack during the 10th April.

Of the 17th King’s - the “moppers up" – there is little to relate. There was nothing to “mop up" so that they did not function. Yet they had shared all the perils of the advance, and when after they had fallen back and at midnight held the following positions, “B", “C", and “D" Companies in and around the sunken road north of Boiry-Becquerelle and “A" Company in trenches west of Henin, they lost 2 officers and 16 other ranks killed, and 3 officers and 48 other ranks wounded.

His death was reported in the Liverpool Daily Post on 08th June 1917:

PREVIOUSLY REPORTED MISSING,

NOW REPORTED KILLED.

Liverpool R. - M'Adam, 48405, T.;

 Soldiers Effects and Pension to father James.

Thomas now lies in St Martin-Calvaire British Cemetery, France. The inscription on his headstone reads:

“YES, WE’LL MEET IN THE MORNING”

The village of St. Martin-sur-Cojeul was taken by the 30th Division on 9 April 1917. It was lost in March 1918 but retaken in the following August. St. Martin Calvaire British Cemetery was named from a calvary which was destroyed during the war. It was begun by units of the 30th Division in April 1917 and used until March 1918. Plot II was made in August and September 1918. The cemetery contains 228 Commonwealth burials of the First World War, five of them unidentified. There are also three German graves within the cemetery. The cemetery was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens.

His mother died in 1953, aged 79, and his father died in 1957, aged 84.

Thomas is commemorated in the Hall of Remembrance at Liverpool Town Hall at Panel 22
 
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