Name
Thomas Milton
Conflict
First World War
Date of Death / Age
26/10/1914
Rank, Service Number & Service Details
Private
L/11329
London Regiment (Royal Fusiliers)
4th (City of London) Bn.
Awards: Service Medals/Honour Awards
Not Yet Researched
Cemetery/Memorial: Name/Reference/Country
LE TOURET MEMORIAL
Panel 6.
France
Headstone Inscription
Not Researched
UK & Other Memorials
Standon War Memorial,
St Mary’s Church Memorial, Standon,
Puckeridge Memorial Plaque, Standon Village Hall, Standon
Biography
Thomas Milton was a Private, No. L/11329 with the 4th Battalion, The Royal Fusiliers.
He was killed in action 26th October 1914 and is commemorated in Panel 6 of Le Touret Memorial, France. Of the men named on the Memorial Tablet in St Mary’s Church, Standon, Thomas was the first to die.
At present we have very little to go on about the Milton family. They have not been found on the 1911 census so it would seem they came to the village after that date. What we have so far is a newspaper cutting from the Herts and Essex Observer dated 7th August 1915 which lists many Standon men who ‘offered themselves for the service of their King and Country’ but of course not all would have passed medicals some may have been in reserved occupations etc. Among those names are three members of what would seem to be the same family. P. Milton, T. Milton (on War Memorial) and W. Milton.
When Thomas Milton disappeared his family would have been informed that he was ‘missing in action’, and it seems in what must have been a desperate attempt to find out what had happened to Thomas, a Mrs L Milton wrote to the Red Cross to try to check if he had been taken prisoner, rather than killed. Thankfully this type of correspondence was indexed and has now been made available. The address given for reply was The Laundry, Puckeridge. This correspondence also gave information about his regiment, 4th Battalion, Royal Fusiliers (City of London Regiment). This information, in turn, led to the discovery of his place of commemoration.
The 4th Battalion Royal Fusiliers were attached to the 3rd Division, 9th Brigade and during October 1914 they saw action at the Battles of Le Bassee, Massines and Armentieres. It is probable that Thomas Milton fell during one of these actions. As a general overview the following information, taken from a website www.greatwar.co.uk may be of interest:
"Outflanking the enemy: The Race to the Sea
Over the next few weeks from late September to the end of November 1914 the Allied and German Armies attempted to outflank one another, responding to each other manoeuvring their armies to make a stand or cover their exposed northern flank. Operationally it was not an intentional race to reach the French or Belgian coast before the other. However, the fight to capture the unoccupied ground on each other's northern flank, the German attempt to capture more French ground and reach Paris, against the French determination to hold up their enemy's advance resulted in the movement of the armies in a north-westerly direction towards the coast. Battles took place as the armies sidestepped one another towards the French-Belgian coast and the Channel ports of Calais, Dunkirk, Ostend and Zeebrugge. This period of fighting has become known as “The Race to the Sea”."
Some further information about the Miltons has recently come to light, and they have been identified as living in Barking in 1891 and 1901 and in Harrow in 1911. Thomas was born in 1887 in the Southend area, so was about 27 years old when he died.
The family seemed to move quite frequently, with some of the children born in Harrow, Southend (3 children) and Southall. By October 1914, Thomas’s mother, Louisa was running the White House Laundry in Puckeridge, on the site very near what used to be the ‘Video Shop’ at the junction of South Rd. and the High Street. During the war Thomas’s brother Philip served in the Navy, and brother Richard served as a Gunner, both surviving the conflict.
Acknowledgments
Di Vanderson, Jonty Wild
