Soldier Record

Tom Harry Wild was born in 1879 in Hyde Cheshire. He and two friends who had married three of the Schoolden sisters of Hyde migrated to Bolton-on-Dearne, South Yorkshire to work in the coal mines in 1912.

Tom was an experienced St John's Ambulance volunteer and was also the pits 'Ambulance Man' (First Aider). He belonged to the Territorial Army in Wath-on-Dearne and was persuaded to volunteer to use his medical skills to help the vast number of casualties in Winston Churchill's disatrous Gallipoli Campaign.

He set sail from Avonmouth on board the Troopship Royal Edward and sailed through the Mediterranean to Alexandria. They then sailed for Gallipoli but were torpedoed by U Boat 14 at 09.20 13th August 1915 in the Aegean Sea south west of Kos. The ship quickly sank with the loss of over a thousand men and crew. Only six hundred men survived including men from his own recruitment centre. This was the first conscripted ocean going troop carrier destroyed by enemy fire in the twentieth century.

Tom left two children who were quickly orphaned when his re-married wife died in childbirth.

My cousin and me visited the Helles Memorial in Gallipoli, where Tom is commemorated, in May 2008 to pay our respects.