Category: Military
Rank: Private 3636 later 10827
Regiment or Ship: Royal Sussex Regiment later 39th Bn Machine Gun Corps
Service Number(s): 10827 (MGC) formerly 3636 (Royal Sussex Regiment)
Place of Birth: Hastings
Date of Death: 03.04.1918
Place of Burial / Memorials:
Villers-Faucon Communal Cemetery Extension; Grave/Memorial Reference:III. B. 14.
Address: Hooe
Photos and newspaper articles
Click on any image to see a larger version
Family Information
The “Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s” website gives no age at death and no details of any parents or wife. Ancestry.com have no service records for any Newland with either of the service numbers.
Without this information, it is not possible to determine his date of birth, where he was born, who his parents were, whether he ever married or any siblings he might have had.
No Newland has been found living in Hooe before, during, or after WW1, as far as the records go. Thomas is a complete mystery and will remain so, until some information is found to enable research to resume.
First World War Experience
All the Hooe memorial says is “Thomas NEWLAND 1st Machine Gun Corps 1918”.
The only match on the “Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s website is “T. NEWLAND, Private, 39th Battalion Machine Gun Corps (Infantry), died 3rd April 1918. It gives no age at death or any details of how he was killed. It doesn’t give any next-of-kin or other relatives.
There is a Medal Roll Index Card for a “Thomas Newland”which adds “service numbers 10827 (MGC); formerly 3636 (Royal Sussex Regiment)”.
It is a reasonable assumption that this is the same man but without further evidence it is impossible to be completely certain.
A section on the website “Ancestry.co.uk”, entitled, “UK Soldiers Died in the Great War, 1914-1919” gives a little bit more information such as “Born Hastings, died France & Flanders, Enlisted at Tunbridge Wells, was in the Western Theatre of War and died of wounds”, but it is not known where this additional information came from and the website doesn’t tell us.
Additional Information
Ancestry.co.uk (on-line); Commonwealth War Graves Commission website (on-line); FreeBMD website (on-line); local newspapers – “Bexhill Chronicle” & “Bexhill Observer”; plus various on-line WW1 forums.