Orders, Decorations and Medals

A Great War ‘First Day of The Somme Casualty’ Trio to Second Lieutenant S. Thomas, Suffolk Regiment, formerly Honourable Artillery Company

1914-15 Star (3982 Pte., H.A.C.); British War and Victory Medals (2.Lieut.) with Bronze Memorial Plaque (Sydney Thomas) this neatly pierced at 6 o’clock and 12 o’clock; together with an original letter from the War Office Accounts Department, dated 4 October 1916, detailing the monies due to his estate after his death, showing a total of forty nine pounds one shilling and eleven pence, this amount including a deduction of eleven pounds and five shillings for pay over-issued 2-31 July 1916, extremely fine (4)

Second Lieutenant Sydney Thomas, a native of Cardiff, was employed as a bank clerk with the London Provincial Bank in Caerphilly. On the outbreak of the Great War he joined the H.A.C. and after service in France was commissioned into the Suffolk Regiment. He was killed in action, France and Flanders, 1 July 1916, on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, and is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial, France. The Battalion War Diary for 1 July 1916 reads: ‘7:28 a.m. The mine opposite left of 101st Brigade was exploded. 7:30 a.m. The infantry assault was launched. The Bn. followed the 10th Lincolns from our assembly trenches down into Sausage Valley and across to the German lines. Owing to the failure of the 102nd Brigade on the left to capture La Boiselle, our advance from the moment it left our assembly trenches was subjected to a very heavy fire from machine guns from La Boiselle. In spite of the fact that wave after wave were mown down by machine gun fire, all pushed on without hesitation, though very few reached the German lines. A photograph of Second Lieutenant Thomas appears in the Cardiff Times of 8 July 1916.