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





Additions will be checked before being published on the website and where possible will be forwarded to the person who submitted the original entries. Your contact details will not be forwarded, but they can send a reply via this messaging system.

please scroll down to send a message

223759

Rflmn. Thomas Joseph Andrews DCM.

British Army 1/5th Btn. South Lancashire Regiment

from:Salford, Lancashire

My late grandfather Thomas Andrews was listed in the London Gazette on the 2nd of December 1919. He was awarded the DCM for 'Marked gallantry and fearless leadership on the 7th November 1919'.

His personal history was just tragic. He was born in 1893. His mother committed to an asylum when he was 10 months old. His father died 4 years later and he was, after a short stay with aunts, sent to a Catholic children's home. I was unable to track down the name of the home. He surfaced again at 18 in Salford and married a year later, his wife Jane in 1912. They had 2 children, my mother and her brother, Tommy.

He joined up in 1915 and was with the 1/5th South Lancashire Regiment where he obviously served with great bravery. In 1918 his wife died in the Spanish Flu epidemic at the age of 24. He was demobbed in 1920, no job, no wife and the children in the care of his mother-in-law. We, his daughter's children, have little contact with our grandfather, although we did meet with him on occasion, as his mother-in-law had very jealously kept his children to herself.

Thomas married again in 1937 when he was working at a cable works in Prescot, to a lady named Frances Winifred Lewis. They had two boys, Philip and John whom I've unfortunately been unable to make contact since my mother and all the family left England in the late '50's. Through research I found that Thomas died at Oldfield, Whiston in July 1975 at the age of 82.



Please type your message:     

We recommend you copy the text about this item and keep a copy on your own computer before pressing submit.
Your Name:            
Email Address:       @ **Please put first part of your email, (before the @ sign) in the first box, and the second part in the second box. Do not include @, it is automatic. Do not enter your full email in each box or add an @ sign or random spaces.**