IWM Collections

30183 Clive Townsend Thompson was from Sydney in New South Wales. He was born in the parish of Stratfield and his next of kin on enlistment was recorded as his mother, Mary Thompson. He was a student aged 19 yrs and 3 mths when he enlisted on 5th September 1916, and was living at the family home at 17 Collingwood St, Drummoyne, Sydney. He had already completed 3 months compulsory military service with 31st Infantry Battalion and he signed for a voluntary 3 year engagement with 22/1st Field Artillery Brigade. He was killed aged 20 in the opening days of the Australian 9th Brigade involvement in the disastrously over-ambitious and inadequately planned Battle of Passchedaele (9th Brigade AIF attacked on 12th October). The Ypres battlefield had been churned into slurry by heavy shelling over the preceding 3 years and torrential rain during the month of August 1917. Passchendaele has rightly become synonymous with the squandering of mens lives in some of the most ill conceived attacks of the entire war. Photographs of the battle convey an idea of the horror of fighting there; it is almost unimaginable to understand what it must have been like on that battlefield at night. A fit, young, intelligent soldier, Clive Thompson could well have been a signaller, runner or rifleman with an artillery observation party, well forward in the front line, directing the preparatory shellfire on the German lines. This would also have placed him amongst the most exposed and vulnerable troops in areas where the ground offered indifferent protection from observation and enemy fire and was full of lethal traps even for the most experienced soldiers.//

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Thank you very much for this short bio.

Forgotten after his parents died. It is so sad.

May he rest in peace along with all who fell in that barbaric war to end all.

excellent ....ww1...the perfect photo old picture army guards remember who of family or friend. like them one picture

Great glimpse into history, it deserves Explore!

The CWGC shows him as 25249 Private John Henry Williams, 6th Battalion Bedfordshire Regiment, commemorated on Pier 2 Face C of the Theipval Memorial - listed amongst the missing whose bodies were never recovered from the battlefield.

During the summer of 1916, 6th(Service) Battalion Bedfordshire Regiment received training for some weeks in offensive operations in between front line duties in the Loos area. The Battalion was moved south with 112th Brigade, 37th Division, to take part in the Battle of Ancre in November 1916, the final act in the 5 months Battle of the Somme. There the Bedfords fought in and around Beaumont-Hamel. During an attack three days into the battle that was held up by unbroken belts of German wire, Private John Henry Williams lost his life in fighting on Thursday 16th November 1916, a freezing cold day, assaulting up a muddy valley east of Beaumont-Hamel as the 6th Bedfords tried in vain to reach and assault German positions on the ridge called Munich Trench.//

In the “SUPPLEMENT TO THE LONDON GAZETTE, 8 NOVEMBER, 1945” I found the listing “537540 W.O. II W. H. BAYES”. Is it possible that this is actually the man depicted in the photograph? - not being an army expert by any stretch of the imagination, I did some research: “In February 1915, with the general introduction of warrant officers throughout the army, Conductors and Sub Conductors became Warrant Officers Class I.” (Wikipedia) As regards insignia “from 11 July 1900, Conductors were authorised to wear a crown within a laurel wreath on their lower sleeve and Sub-Conductors a crown, although they did not start actually wearing these until 1901 and 1904 respectively. In 1915, Conductors were authorised a crown in a laurel wreath and Sub-Conductors the royal coat of arms. In 1918, Conductors began wearing the royal arms in a laurel wreath, still their badge of rank.” (Wikipedia) The man shown in the photograph appears to have this insignia on the badge on his cap – you can’t see the lower sleeves. I’ve also discovered that there is a listing for a ‘William Bayes’ on the Woking Memorial to World War One in the Town Square but no rank is listed against the listing. Not sure if this helps at all but thought I should post these facts with nothing seemingly known about this brave man.

I wonder if this was actually H H W Boyes who served in the Royal Engineers. His medal card says his rank was Temporary Captain. Corps of Royal Engineers: Temp. Lt. H H W Boyes from N. Staff. R., to be Temp. Lt. 9th April 1916, with seniority as from 13th Oct 1915. Source: Suppl. to the London Gazette 6th May 1916. H H W Boyes M.C. was granted the rank of Major when he resigned his commission in 1919. Source: Suppl. to the London Gazette 5 Nov 1919. This would mean he had survived the First World War and checking on the CWGC website there's no record of the loss of H Bayes or H Boyes during WW1. The Free BMD indexes record the death of a Henry H W Boyes in the Hove district of Sussex in 1959, aged 71. [b.c.1888].

Thank you Coolshanagh25 and M2901. Interesting questions, we will have to do a bit more work here to get to the bottom of this. This is going to take a little time, so please bear with us. In the meantime, if anyone else has anything to add to this, we'd welcome their comments here.

I concur with the research done by 'Coolshanagh25'. This is Captain (later Major) H H W Boyes MC RE. He was a "Tunnelling Officer" on the Western Front, having transferred to the Royal Engineers from the North Staffordshires in the Autumn of 1915 (officers of relevant experience were sought out in preparation for the 'mining' of German positions in the Somme sector). Temporary Lieutenant H H W Boyes MC was promoted to Acting Captain in the Royal Engineers whilst commanding a section of a Tunnelling Company with effect 13 Oct 1915. (LG 29838 dated 24 Nov 1916). Captain H H W Boyes MC RE was promoted to Acting Major with effect 2 Sep 1918. (LG 31110 dated 3 Jan 1919).//

Temporary Captain Henry H W Boyes MC RE was also awarded a Mention in Despatches published in the London Gazette on 11 December 1917. The 1891 census for Scotland shows a Henry H W Boyes born in Roxburghshire in 1888. The Institute of Mining Engineers records (Transactions Volume LIX) for 1919-1920 shows a Henry H W Boyes, registered with the Mining Institute of Scotland, as working at Ropp Tin Mines, Ropp, on the Jos Plateau in Bukuru, Northern Nigeria. The Bulletins of the Institution of Mining and Metallurgy for 1946-1947 report that Lt Col H H W Boyes arrived from Northern Nigeria and was appointed as Officer for West Africa (Bulletin 478); and that he later returned to Northern Nigeria (Bulletin 481).//