The Wartime Memories Project - The Second War

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224911 Pte. Thomas Purvis British Army 13th Battalion Gloucestershire Regiment from:County Durham I've been undertaking a spot of research on my Great Granddad, Thomas Purvis, who fought during WW1 with the 13th Battalion Gloucestershire Regiment; and I stumbled upon this website so thought I'd provide some information to help you piece together the men who fought in the regiment. Thomas and my family are from County Durham, and the family, including Thomas, were coal miners. His mother and father were from Yorkshire, and he married a lady, Lydia Johns, of Cornish stock. Thomas lived all of his life in the East Durham coalfields. He enlisted at Sunderland on the 22nd March 1915. I believe his mother bore witness to his enlistment, as opposed to his wife, which may suggest Lydia wasn't too happy with him joining up! He was 36 years and 9 months when he enlisted, making him born 1878/1879, which I would have thought was quite old for an enlisting soldier at the time. He survived the war, which is useful otherwise I wouldn't be here! He was certainly wounded in the leg and used a walking stick for the rest of his life upon discharge which was in 1919. Family tradition has it that he was wounded on The Somme, but I am yet to verify that. After the war, Thomas returned to his pre-war occupation of coal miner and had more children. He had 6 children in total: 3 daughters and 3 sons; with my Granddad (Thomas's son) born in the year of his enlistment in 1915. Thomas died in 1941 but from what I can gather from family stories, Thomas was a bad tempered man, but that said I think fighting in such conditions would have tested the patience of a saint and left a mark on most people. Unfortunately, I don't know a great deal more about Thomas as a person because my mother (Thomas's granddaughter) was born in 1940 so didn't know Thomas and her dad (Thomas's son) didn't pass much information down to the family. Paul Young Add to this record.  Related Content: Can you help us to add to our records? Add a record to our website. The names and stories on this website have been submitted by their relatives and friends. If your relations are not listed please add their names so that others can read about them Did you or your relatives live through the Second World War? Do you have any photos, newspaper clippings, postcards or letters from that period? Have you researched the names on your local or war memorial? Were you or your relative evacuated? Did an air raid affect your area? If so please let us know. Help us to build a database of information on those who served both at home and abroad so that future generations may learn of their sacrifice. Contact us. Celebrate your own Family History Celebrate by honouring members of your family who served in the Secomd World War both in the forces and at home. We love to hear about the soldiers, but also remember the many who served in support roles, nurses, doctors, land army, muntions workers etc. Please use our Family History resources to find out more about your relatives. Then please send in a short article, with a photo if possible, so that they can be remembered on these pages.

The free section of the Wartime Memories Project website is run by volunteers. We have been helping people find out more about their relatives wartime experiences since 1999 by recording and preserving recollections, documents, photographs and small items. The website is paid for out of our own pockets, library subscriptions and from donations made by visitors. The popularity of the site means that it is far exceeding available resources and we currently have a huge backlog of submissions. If you are enjoying the site, please consider making a donation, however small to help with the costs of keeping the site running. Hosted by: The Wartime Memories Project Website is archived for preservation by the British Library Copyright MCMXCIX - MMXXIV - All Rights Reserved We do not permit the use of any content from this website for the training of LLMs or for use in Generative AI, it also may not be scraped for the purpose of creating other websites.