We Are Most Anxious For News Of Him

On 27th March 1915, 18-year-old ship’s boiler maker Tom Willing (sometimes misspelled Willings) was found fit for enlistment into the Durham Light Infantry.

He was the eldest of his ship’s plater Dad Thomas and Mum Esther’s many children, crammed into two rooms on Marshall Street, Sunderland in 1911, when Tom was still only an errand boy.

His little brothers Joe, Jim and sisters Lily and Esther Jane must all have been so proud on the day he enlisted.

Baby sister Eva would be three months old when he set off for the front in France with 1/7th DLI the following summer, disappearing from his family's sight into the vast war machine across the Channel.

He sent letters home as often as he could.

Everyone worried about him, as he worried about everyone back home.

He wanted to make it back to Sunderland to see how his new baby sister had grown.

He kept going.

On 2nd May 1918, this letter was written by his Dad to the War Office. It runs:

“Having no word from my son, L/Cpl T Willing, 1/7th Battalion DLI for about 7 weeks, I would be much obliged if you could give us any information of his whereabouts as soon as possible, as we are anxious for news of him.”

But on 25th March, four days into the German’s massive Spring Offensive had overwhelmed our lines in so many places, Tom’s 1/7th Battalion had been making a stand at the canal near Eterpigny, when it was found at daybreak that the enemy had managed to cross the canal on our flank in large numbers and now began to pour enfilade machine gunfire into Tom’s position.

The Battalion fell back over the nearby ridge but were ordered to put in a counterattack later in the day, taking up a line at great cost which they held for two hours, until the order came to fall back again.

At home in Sunderland on Hardwick Street, Tom’s family would never know any of this.

And no one at the War Office knew how to answer his Dad's letter; Tom's body was never found.

Today Tom’s name stands proudly (albeit with an unnecessary S on the end of Willing) on the beautiful Pozieres Memorial in the middle of the Somme battlefields and he is Not Forgotten.

Pozieres Memorial on the Somme, where the names of the Missing, like Tom, are inscribed on the panels around the outer walls.