Pte 34800 Hornsby Thomas

Hornsby Thomas was born on 9th December 1877 in Bootle, the youngest surviving son of Benjamin Thomas and his wife Hannah Elizabeth (née Quirk).  His parents, both born in Liverpool, married in 1861 and had at least ten children.  He had older siblings Annie, Harold, Roderick (died), Ben, Amy, Walter (died), Bertha, and George, a twin sister Maggie, and a younger brother Geoffrey.  Before Hornsby’s birth in 1871 his parents lived in Cranworth Street, Bootle, near Gladstone Dock. The family religion was Church of England. 

 

In 1881 his parents are living at 46 Dunluce Street, Walton, with eight children.  His father Benjamin, 44, is a collector of water rents, his mother Hannah is 41, Hornsby is 3. The youngest, Geoffrey, died the next year, aged 3.

 

When Hornsby was 9 years old his father died, in June 1887, aged 49, the family still living at 46 Dunluce Street.

 

In 1891 his widowed mother, 51, is head of household at 172 Salisbury Road, Everton, with five children at home.  Annie, 22, and Bertha, 17, are florists, George is 15, Hornsby is 13, an ironmonger’s shopboy, and Maggie is 13, at school.

 

His mother died just before Christmas 1900, aged 60, living at 52 Baltic Street.

 

In 1901 Hornsby is living with his married sister Amy at 32 Baltic Street, Anfield.  Her husband David is a ship’s steward; they have four children.  Hornsby is 23, employed as a coachman/groom. 

 

In 1911 he is at 42 Baltic Street with sister Amy and her family. Hornsby is 32, single, employed as a coachman.

 

He enlisted in Liverpool as Private 34800, 18th Bn, King’s (Liverpool) Regiment.  As his service record has not survived, the details are not known, but based on the amount of the War Gratuity, he enlisted (or was conscripted) in about August 1916 when he was 38 years old.  At some point he was transferred to the 4th Bn K.L.R. and was attached to No. 98 Company, Machine Gun Corps.

 

In January 1918 the 98th Machine Gun Corps was in the Ypres Salient.  Hornsby was killed in action on 25th January 1918, aged 40.  He now rests in Potijze Chateau Grounds Cemetery, Flanders.

 

The old chateau grounds at Potijze are the site of three Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemeteries containing over 850 Commonwealth burials of the First World War. Potijze Chateau Grounds, Potijze Chateau Lawn, and Potijze Chateau Wood cemeteries were all formed in the spring of 1915 and used for the burial of Commonwealth soldiers until 1918. The architectural features of the cemeteries were designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield in the 1920s.

Chateau Grounds Cemetery was used from May 1915 to September 1918, and during that time 241 soldiers were buried in Plot I. Plot II was formed after the Armistice by the concentration of 225 bodies from isolated graves and small graveyards from the country North-East of Potijze.

For almost the entire period of the First World War the village of Potijze was held by the Commonwealth forces but stood directly behind the Allied trenches and was well within range of German guns. It was here that soldiers entered the communication and support trenches that led to the front-line. Although badly damaged by constant shell fire, Potijze Chateau, a country house dating from the nineteenth century, remained occupied and used by Commonwealth troops throughout the war. In the spring of 1915, during the Second Battle of Ypres, it was headquarters of the 27th Division, then under the command of Major-General Thomas D’Oyly Snow. The ground floor was later used as an Advanced Dressing Station while the first floor, which commanded views of the German lines, served as an observation post. For much of the war the Chateau was surrounded by a cluster of dug-outs and trenches and a large shed on the grounds, known to soldiers as ‘Lancer Farm’, housed ammunition and trench stores. Working parties would pause here to collect tools, coils of barbed wire, duckboards, bombs and other supplies before moving up the line.

There was particularly heavy fighting in the vicinity of Potijze in August 1917 during the opening phase of the Third Battle of Ypres, also known as ‘Passchendaele’. A young officer serving with the Manchester Regiment later recalled the devastation caused to the landscape around the Chateau by the relentless British and German artillery fire:

'This was a country where the desire to kill and destroy had developed to an unimaginable intensity. Nothing of use was to be left by either side, and every yard of ground almost was searched by the gunners to carry out their cruel game.'

Yet Potijze was never a quiet sector. On 9 August 1916, as the Somme offensive raged further south, the first and second battalions of the Hampshire Regiment spent ten days in trenches just east of the Chateau. As they were preparing to leave the Germans staged a surprise attack using a potent form of phosgene gas. Both units were caught unawares and although no ground was conceded the regiment suffered over 240 casualties, about half of whom were killed. The 1st Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers were stationed on the same stretch of front and also suffered numerous gas casualties. Over 60 men who fell in the attack are buried in rows A, E, and F of Chateau Wood Cemetery.

Edmund Blunden, a young English officer serving with the Royal Sussex Regiment, was stationed here at the beginning of 1917. He later recalled the atmosphere of Potijze during the third winter of the war:

'The new year was yet very young when the battalion filed through Ypres to take over the trenches at Potijze, which we came to know very well. It was not the worst place in the Salient. I had seen it already, and its arrangement was simple – a breastwork front line, running from Zonnebeke road to a railway bank on the south; a support line; two good (or not too bad) communication trenches – Haymarket and Piccadilly, Battalion headquarters dugout was near Potijze Château, beside the road. It boasted a handsome cheval-glass and a harmonium, but not a satisfactory roof. This headquarters also enjoyed a kind of Arcadian environment, for the late owner had constructed two or three ponds in the grounds with white airy bridges spanning them, weeping willows at their marges, and there were even statues of Venus and other handsome deities on little eminences, although I did not examine them closely. The château itself, much injured as it was, was not destroyed, and in the upper storey my observers gazed through a telescope on a dubious landscape; lucky these, whose day could not begin before eight, and ended at four with the thickening of what little light there had been. Littered on the damp floor beside them were maps of parts of the estate, some of a great age, and log-books of the number of woodcock, hares, rabbits and I forget what, formerly laid low by shooting parties of this fine house.'

In the decades after the war, Blunden became a celebrated poet and author, and his memoir, Undertones of War, is considered a classic of First World War literature. In the 1960s he acted as a commissioner with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

His sister, Amy, still at 42 Baltic Street, Anfield, received his Army effects of £9-17s-5d and a War Gratuity of £8-10s.  Amy died in 1931, still in Baltic Street.

 

His twin Maggie married in 1903. Sadly, her husband, George Henry Langley, 6th Loyal North Lancs, was killed on 9/4/1916 in Mesopotamia, aged 35.  He is commemorated on the Basra Memorial.

 

Hornsby is commemorated in Liverpool’s Hall of Remembrance, Panel 38, Right (4th K.L.R.).

 

We currently have no further information on Hornsby Thomas, If you have or know someone who may be able to add to the history of this soldier, please contact us.