Thomas Alfred Gidley 1882 - 1917

Thomas Alfred Gidley was an Able Seaman in the RNVR. He died, however, not at sea, but in the Flanders mud, because he was transferred to the Hawke Battalion, Royal Naval Division. There was an excess of naval personnel available, whereas the army needed a constant supply of men. In fact, over 40% of Royal Navy losses in the First World War took place in the trenches.
Thomas Alfred was the son of Thomas Gidley and his wife Elizabeth nee Branch. Of their thirteen children, Frederick Gidley had already been killed just a few weeks earlier, on July 25 of this same year, 1917. Thomas was just two years older than Frederick. In 1911 he was a grocer's assistant, living with his family in his mother-in-law's house, 28 Beatrice Ave, Plymouth. He had married on 26 Dec 1910, in St Jude's, Plymouth, May Isabel Wood and they had two children, Doris born in 1911 and Thomas Sydney born in 1914. At the Devon Family History Society headquarters in Exeter I came across a book entitled The family history of some Devon people, by Phyllis Marsh, written in 1995. This relates how May Gidley had to work to supplement her war widow's pension. She never remarried.
According to his Medal Rolls index card, Thomas Alfred was attached to the Army Reserve in August 1916, entered active service on January 1, 1917, went in the draft for the BEF on April 29, 1917, and joined the Hawke Battalion on the same day.
He died of wounds on October 17, 1917, in the 18th Corps Main Dressing Station. His left knee and left femur were both shattered. The Hawke Battalion was involved in the third battle at Ypres, also called the battle for Passchendaele, and it looks as though Thomas Alfred would have been familiar with the horrors of the quagmire battlefields. He was buried in Duhallow Advanced Dressing Station Cemetery, believed to have been named after a southern Irish hunt. It was a medical post just north of Ypres (now Ieper). Some graves from smaller cemeteries were moved there after the war. It is pictured above.

See also the website The (63rd) Royal Naval Division: sailors in the First World War trenches, by Eric R.J. Wils.