When my Great Aunt died in 1980 I was going through her effects and came across a tin.  Opening it I found it contained two notebooks and ephemera including medals, papers, pictures and postcards belonging to her husband Thomas Pilkington.  On reading the diaries I found they were from the First World War when he was a Private in the Royal Army Medical Corps attached to LV Brigade Royal Field Artillery in Mesopotamia and covered February to September 1916.  I put the diaries back in the tin, put it away and more or less forgot about them for many years.

 

Recently I was looking for something else and came across the tin.  On rereading the diaries I wondered why they suddenly finished on 22nd September half way through the second note book.  I never knew Tom Pilkington.  He was born in 1892 and died in 1958, three years before I was born.  I asked my father who didn’t know anything about his war service apart from the fact he was wounded and for the rest of his life wore a heavily built up left shoe and a calliper on that leg.  This all made sense as amongst the ephemera in the tin were three postcards of hospitals in Bombay and many pictures of Tom in various wards and departments in The Royal Victoria Hospital, Netley in Hampshire.

 

I thought I would try and find out what happened to Tom on 23rd September.  After all surely it would be easy – just download his service record and that would tell me.  How wrong I was.  His service record was destroyed during the Second World War so I had to try and find out through other sources.  I came across the war diary of LV Brigade, R.F.A. and on looking at this I found it also contained the diary of C Battery with whom Tom had sailed on the HMT Ausonia from Alexandria, Egypt to Mesopotamia in February 1916.  On reading these diaries they didn’t help in solving what happened to him.  In his diary he mentions that he was at the 40th Field Ambulance and the 16th Casualty Clearing Station just before 23rd September.  These diaries were also available but could shed no light on the mystery. I did however find it interesting to see the different perspectives of what was deemed important in each diary from the individual soldier through Battery to Brigade level.  That is what I have included in the main body of this booklet along with some details I have gleaned regarding his training and his journey back to England.

 

Through further research I have tried to piece together his initial training and what happened from his being wounded to his arrival at The Royal Victoria Hospital, Netley.  From Tom’s Silver Badge Card I managed to discover that he enlisted on 19th July 1915 and was discharged on 6th December 1918.  Under `cause of discharge’ it says `wounds’.  All these findings I have included before and after the actual diaries but what was the full truth.

 

It soon became apparent that he was probably not wounded on 23rd September as amongst the ephemera with the diaries there was a hand stitched Christmas card from Tom to Lizzie Hargreaves, my Great Aunt, dated 1916 clearly stating that he was still in Mesopotamia at the time.  Casualties from the campaign were shipped down to Bombay and, even allowing for the date the card would have had to be sent in time for Christmas, it seems highly unlikely that he was still in Mesopotamia so long after being wounded.  Maybe there was a third missing diary.  The second diary finishes part way through a notebook so it does not seem likely that a third would have been started.  So what did happen to Tom Pilkington?

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I have not included any details of the action in Mesopotamia as much has been written on this by people far more qualified than me. What I have tried to achieve is one man’s view of his time in action during the First World War but put into perspective at Battery and Brigade level.

 

I have also not commented on any of the diary entries as I did not feel it was my place to do so.

 

"I will now hand you over to my Great Uncle Tom!"

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Andrew Schofield

April 2019