Jean Longstaff has submitted the following:-

John Thomas was born in Consett in April 1884, or according to his enlistment papers 1888. His parents, John and Mary, were both originally from Ireland; father John was a steelworker at the plate mill, and when John Thomas was born there were already three girls, Mary, Elizabeth, Isabella, in the house at 37 Princes Street, with Rebecca born a year after him. It s not certain when John Thomas arrived in Canada but he found work as a miner in British Columbia and on 12th January 1916 married Cumbrian girl Mary Thompson in St. Andrew’s Manse, Nanaimo and three weeks later left her to enlist in the Canadian Expeditionary Force.

Having spent three years with the 3rd Durham Light Infantry (Special Reserve), John was passed as fit and became Private 703511 in the 102nd Battalion, which had recruited in Northern British Columbia and was mobilized at Comox on Vancouver Island. The battalion left the island on 10th June 1916 and proceeded in full marching order, with kit-bags and two blankets per man, to travel by train to Halifax and then embarked on the SS Empress of Britain to arrive in Liverpool on 28th June for onward travel to Bramshott to become part of the 11th Infantry Brigade, 4th Canadian Division. After six weeks intense training in musketry and bayonet drills the 102nd travelled to Southampton and then crossed the Channel on 11th August and remained at camp close to Reninghelst until the end of the month, undergoing trench training with the 29th Battalion. Casualties were quite frequent even behind the lines and Private Hinds was wounded on 1st September whilst part of a working party repairing trenches, but returned to duty the next day.

The Battalion returned to the front line on 9th November, just three days after John Thomas had been promoted to Corporal, where on the muddy plain around Courcelette they were part of the attack to capture that portion of Regina Trench that was still in German hands. Although they gained their objective, the battalion suffered under fierce counter-attacks from the Germans and one of the casualties was John Thomas Hinds.

John Thomas Hinds is remembered in Consett on C101.01

He is also remembered in Canada on their Virtual War Memorial and their Book of Remembrance and also on the Cenotaph in Nanaimo, British Columbia.

Canadian Book of Remembrance
Canadian Virtual War Memorial
The CWGC entry for Corporal Hinds