Sgt 21771 Thomas Daniel Fullerton

• Age: 21
• From: Liverpool
• Regiment: The King's (Liverpool Regiment) 19th Btn
• K.I.A Monday 9th April 1917
• Commemorated at: Henin Crucifix Cem
  Panel Ref: A.29

Thomas Daniel Fullerton was born on 01st May 1895 in Liverpool and was the son of  Daniel Fullerton and his wife Mary Ellen (nee Twist) who were married in 1875 at Our Lady & St. Nicholas & St. Anne, Chapel Street.

The 1901 Census shows the family living at 62 Hombard Street, Liverpool. His father, Daniel, is 46 years of age and a sailmaker, born in Liverpool, his mother, Mary E. is 47 years old and was  born in St Helens. They have seven children in the household all born in Liverpool;  Jane L. aged 21, Martha a 19 year old cigarette maker, Elizabeth aged 17 and a tobacco machinist, John aged 15 and a commercial clerk, Lily is 8, Thomas D. is 5, and Mabel T. is 3.

The 1911 Census: shows the family have moved and are living at 19 Mallow Road, Molyneux Road, Liverpool. His father, Daniel is a 56year old sailmaker, his mother Mary Ellen is 57. They have been married for 35 years. They have four children still at home; Lilian 18, Thomas 15 is a sailmaker's apprentice, Mabel is 13, and Doris is 9. 

Thomas enlisted in Liverpool on 14th November 1914 joining the 19^th Battalion, The King’s Liverpool Regiment as Private 21771, giving his age as 19 years and 5 months, occupation as a sail-maker, and his next of kin as his father Daniel of 19 Mallow Road, Kensington, Liverpool. He is 5 feet 5 1/2 inches tall, weighs 131 pounds, with a chest measurement of 36 1/2 inches. His complexion is fresh, eyes brown, and hair dark brown. He stated his religion as Non Comformist.

Formed on 07^th September 1914 the 19^th Battalion trained locally at Sefton Park and remained living at home or in rented accommodation until November 1914. They then moved to the hutted accommodation at Lord Derby’s estate at Knowsley Hall. On 30th April 1915 the 19th Battalion alongside the other three Pals battalions left Liverpool via Prescot Station for further training at Belton Park, Grantham. They remained here until September 1915 when they reached Larkhill Camp on Salisbury Plain. He arrived in France on 7^th November 1915.

His service records show:

17^th,  19^th & 20th  Battalion at the  Battle of Arras 09^th April 1917

Everard Wyrall records the events of the day  in Volume 2 of his History of the King's Regiment (Liverpool).

The 89^th Brigade formed up for the attack with the 19^th King's on the right and the 20^th King’s on the left. The 17^th 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 19^th 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 20^th 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 21^st Division was observed to have penetrated the enemy’s front line, but in the left the right Battalion of the 21^st Brigade (the Wilts) was on the St. Martin- Neuville Vitasse road; the left flank of the 20^th 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 89^th Brigade Headquarters ordered both the 19^th and 20^th 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 10^th April.

Of the 17^th 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. 

Thomas Daniel was one of those other ranks killed in action.

Henin-sur-Cojeul was captured on 02nd April 1917, lost in March 1918 after an obstinate resistance by the 40th Division, and retaken on 24 August 1918 by the 52nd (Lowland) Division.

Henin Crucifix Cemetery is named from a calvary standing on the opposite side of the road. It was made by units of the 30th Division after the capture of the village in 1917.

Henin Crucifix Cemetery contains 61 burials and commemorations of the First World War. Two of the burials are unidentified and eight graves, destroyed in later fighting, are now represented by special memorials.

The cemetery was designed by G H Goldsmith.

A 1918 signed declaration lists family members for Thomas. His parents are Daniel and Mary Ellen of 38 Portelet Road, Liverpool. Also at this address are three of his sisters Lily 26, Mabel 20, and Doris 17. Three doors down at 32 Portelet Road are his brother John 34, and sister Martha Thorpe 32. A sister Mary Ellen Thorpe 42 is living at 18 Gorsebury Road, Liverpool and sister Jane Lewis Knowles 40 of 13 Bective Street, Liverpool, and a sister Elizabeth Walsh of Webster Road, Liverpool.

Thomas is commemorated on the Memorial at St. Paul's Church now situated in St Anne's Church, Stanley, Liverpool. 

remembered at http://saintannestanley.co.uk/war%20memorials/sps_a_k.html