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
Pte. Thomas Edward Beaver
British Army 2/6th Btn. North Staffordshire Regiment
from:Langley Mill, Derbyshire
(d.15th April 1918)
Thomas Beaver was my great uncle. He was born at Langley Mill, near Heanor, Derbyshire on 5th May 1899, the eighth child (of eleven) of Charles Beaver (a coal miner) and his wife, Mary (nee Williamson). A coal miner himself after leaving school, he enlisted in the 3rd Battalion, Sherwood Foresters on 18th September 1915 and received the number 30924. However, he was discharged at Sunderland on 16th of November 1915 "having made a mis-statement as to age on enlistment". However, two years later at the age of eighteen he enlisted in the Sherwood Foresters again and received the number 42886.
Arriving in France at the beginning of April 1918, he and his unit were immediately transferred to the 2/6th Battalion, North Staffordshire Regiment. Unfortunately, however, he was reported missing presumed killed during the Battle of Bailleul on 15th April 1918. His distraught mother always believed that he would come home and was suffering from shellshock. She even sought to make her way to France to find him herself. However, the Germans had overrun the British positions at Bailleul in their last major offensive in the West, and his body was not recovered until after the war. He is buried at the Bailleul Communal Cemetery Extension. He was unmarried.
