Private Henry (Harry) Wall Thompson

7394272 - 3rd. Field Dressing Station Royal Army Medical Corps

Born November 1920 Westmorland

Died 2 May 1944, Newmarket, Cambridgeshire (Age 23)

Son of Thomas Thompson and Clara (nee Wall)

Sister of Constance Mary Thompson

Nephew of Edmund, Brownrigg, and Moffatt Thompson

Henry Wall Thompson was born around November 1920. The only son of Thomas Thompson and his wife Clara (nee Wall). Clara Wall was the eldest sister of Thomas Henry Wall, he died in WW1 and is also commemorated on the Patterdale War Memorial. In early 1911, his mother Clara, who was born in Patterdale, was working as a 'Under-Housemaid' at Flass House near Crosby Ravenscroft. She met Thomas Thompson, a Railway Porter at nearby Tebay and a marriage was planned for March 1912. However, for some reason the marriage was 'called off' before the third reading of the Banns on the 25th February 1912. They did eventually marry around August 1914.  It is not clear exactly whereabouts the family lived in the early years but when his mother died in May 1923, at the young age of 33, she was recorded as living in Glenridding. It is quite probable that, Clara's mother, the widow Annie Tuer Wall helped to raise Henry and Constance at her home Oak Bank in Patterdale, alongside his father Thomas, who had served with the Border Regiment and been injured in the war, being honourably discharged in 1919 with the Silver War Badge.

Before enlisting in the Royal Army Medical Corps in 1941, Henry was serving an apprenticeship in the building trade (possible Brown Leonard Ltd). He saw much service in the Mediterranean area, including Sicily and Italy.

The newspaper report says that he had returned to England about 6 weeks before he died and had been granted leave which was spent 'at home' with his grandmother Annie (his father had died at the start of 1943, so this was probably his home now). It was whilst here that  he contracted Meningococcal Meningitis and was admitted to the White Lodge Hospital in Exning, near Newmarket in Suffolk, where he died on the 2nd May 1944.

He was buried in St Patrick's Churchyard on the 5th of May 1944 with military honours, six sergeants from a local camp acted as coffin bearers, their commanding officer read the lesson and a bugler sounded The Last Post. He was buried next to his Uncle Thomas Henry Wall, who had died in the First World War. They are both therefore commemorated in St Patrick’s Church and on the Patterdale War Memorial.

His grandmother, Ann Tuer Wall, having witnessed the burial of both her son and her grandson, died in July 1950 and is buried at St Patrick’s Churchyard Patterdale, We are unsure what became of his sister, Constance M Thompson who was born around May 1916. We know that she was still living with her father in the Township Patterdale in 1939 but are not sure what happened after that. If you have any information please let us know.

The Graves of TH Wall and his nephew Henry Wall Thompson side by side in St Patrick's Church Patterdale

Henry’s funeral as reported in The Herald - with echoes of his Uncle’s funeral

Private Thomas Henry Wall - Henry’s Uncle. And below news of Henry’s death in the Herald