Name
Harry Charles Tomlin
18 August 1893
Conflict
First World War
Date of Death / Age
18/11/1918
28
Rank, Service Number & Service Details
Private
32355
East Surrey Regiment
7th Bn.
Awards: Service Medals/Honour Awards
Searched but not found
Cemetery/Memorial: Name/Reference/Country
COLOGNE SOUTHERN CEMETERY
VIII. E. 23.
Germany
Headstone Inscription
Not Researched
UK & Other Memorials
Hitchin Town Memorial, St Mary's Church Roll of Honour (Book), Hitchin
Pre War
Harry (sometimes Harold or Henry) was born on 18 August 1893 in Leicester and his parents were Clifford and Margaret Martha Tomlin.
Records are proving and they are not found until the census of 1911. Then the family were living at 59 Grove Road, Hitchin. Present were both parents, Clifford (40) and Margaret (40), Clifford working as a general labourer. The census recorded they had been married for 19 years with 4 children, of whom 2 had died. The two living children Dorothy (18) and Henry 17 and a general labourer.
Both parents were recorded as born in Hitchin, Dorothy in Bradford, Yorkshire (c 1892) and Harry in Leicester.
Officially he was recorded as born in Leicester and enlisted in Hitchin.
According to the Herts Mercury before joining the army he was in business as a fruiterer and greengrocer.
Wartime Service
Harry joined the Middlesex Regiment on the 3rd May 1916 with the Regimental Number 2952. When he arrived in France on the 16th December 1916 he was posted to the Training Reserve of the 1st Battalion of the East Surrey Regiment.
Later he was posted to the 7th (Service) Battalion of the East Surreys with the Number 32355. The Battalion was in the 37th Brigade of the 12th Division.
He was reported as missing on the 3rd May 1917 and then as a prisoner of war in Germany. German records confirm he was captured near Lens on that date.
He died of “Died of Spanish Sickness (while POW)” – Spanish Flu.
He was buried in Plot 8, Row E, Grave 23 in the Cologne Southern Cemetery in Germany.
Additional Information
His pension cards record Margaret Martha Tomlin as his mother and dependant, living at 59 Grove Road, Hitchin. She was awarded a pension of 12s 6d a week from 12 August 1919.
Acknowledgments
Adrian Dunne, David C Baines, Jonty Wild
