Add Information to Record of a Person who served during the Great War on The Wartime Memories Project Website

Add Information to Record of a Person who served during the Great War on The Wartime Memories Project Website





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208274

Pte. Thomas Boyle

British Army Machine Gun Corps.

from:Cahir, Clonmel, Tipperary, Ireland

I'm afraid I don't know much about the story of my Great Grandfather, Thomas Boyle's war experiences, apart from him leaving Ireland to enlist in 1914 due to family reasons. A situation which was highly contentious given the fact that the subsequent 1916 uprising was yet to happen. What I do know is that he enlisted in the Royal Irish Regiment on the 8th or 9th of August 1915, and was injured in Ypres whilst serving with the Left Wing Coy., Machine Gun Corps., on or about 26th of November 1917. A letter to his mother in Clonmel, Tipperary states the injury as 'gunshot wound, right side, mild'. It appears he had taken shrapnel to the face and in later photographs it is possible to see a disfigurement in his jaw.

The records are sketchy, but it seems he was to convalesce at a British hospital, maybe in the Oswestry area, as his dispersal record has a stamp from there. He left the army on the 9th of March 1919, when he was placed on the reserve list. Unfortunately, my Great Grandfather's wound would serve to trouble him after the war and he died quite prematurely in 1942, at the age of 44. From what I have been told, the cause of his death was said to have been related to shrapnel poisoning.



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