Thomas Edward Page joined the Worcestershire Yeomanry at the beginning of the war, and was posted to the second line (the 2/1st Worcestershire Yeomanry). In October 1916, this unit provided two drafts for the 1/8th Worcestershire Regiment in France, and these men joined this infantry unit at Mondicourt and Beaudricourt on the Somme. Edward Corbett, the Regimental Quartermaster Sergeant described these men as “perhaps the finest we ever received.”
The unit at the time were in the sector around Le Sars, and less than two months later a direct hit was scored by the enemy on a post held by several members of the Worcestershire – Thomas Page may have been wounded here, although to die so far away at Rouen only 4 days later seems to suggest an earlier incident.
On 30th December 1916, the Berrow’s Worcester Journal reported:
“Official intimation has been received by Mr E T Page, Broom Farm, Cradley, Malvern, late of the Talbot Hotel, Knightwick, that his son, Thomas Edward Page, died in hospital on the 18th December from wounds. Private Page was a butcher apprenticed to Mr Molyneux of Worcester, and soon after the outbreak of war he joined the Worcestershire Yeomanry, but in September last he was transferred to a Battalion of the Worcestershire Regiment serving in France.”
Malvern News 6/1/17
