Er Cof am Tom Rudge

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Further to last night's post, regarding my great-uncle Tom Rudge; it would seem from the records I can find, that he was part of the British Expeditionary Force deployed at the very outset of The First World War, and fought in the First Battle of Mons in August of 1914, followed by action in the First Battle of Ypres at Gheluvelt, in October and November of 1914; where his battalion was all but wiped out. Following reinforcement, in December, they were engaged in the defence of Givenchy-lès-la-Bassée, where, as far as I can tell, my great-uncle was killed, just a few days after his twenty-first birthday.

He was still officially missing in action from the 21st of December 1914, as reported in one of his local newspapers, The Staffordshire Advertiser, on March the 20th, 1915. As I mentioned yesterday, his official death is now recorded as the 22nd of December, which ties in with the rest of the details I've found so far. Apparently he was a bright lad with a guaranteed future in engineering in the gas industry should he have survived the war: which is damned bizarre, given that both my dad and my cousin Richard Harvey both ended up in the same industry.

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