Son of Louisa and the late John A. Hann, of 31 Henderson Rd., Sunderland. Enlisted in 1914.
Linda Gowans has submitted the following:-
Thomas M C. Hann was born in Sunderland in 1896. The 1901 census finds him at 7 Chepstow Street, with his father John Anthony, Grocer’s Assistant, born Byers Green, Co. Durham, 1857, his mother Louisa, born York 1853, and four older siblings. His brother Walter was a Grocer’s Errand Boy, but by 1911, when the family was at 31 Henderson Road, Walter has become a Plumber, and it is Thomas, the youngest, who has taken over that job – probably a family responsibility linked to his father’s work!
Thomas enlisted in 1914 at Gateshead, but his service papers have not survived, and we do not know if he was overseas when his father John committed suicide in 1916 in Sunderland: if he had been with the 7th Battalion of the Norfolk Regiment from the start, he would have gone to France at the end of May 1915 and probably taken part in the Battle of Loos.
After coming through the years of war, Thomas died only just over three months before the Armistice. He was killed in action on the first day of the Battle of Amiens, a decisive victory for the Allies including British, Canadian, Australian and French troops, and the opening phase of an offensive that helped bring the First World War to its end. The then Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, was to write in his memoirs that ‘the British Army itself did not realise the extent and effect of the triumph they had won that day’.
Thomas’s grave is in now peaceful countryside at Ribemont Communal Cemetery Extension (about 8 kilometres south-west of Albert), where in August 1918 68 burials were carried out by units engaged in the defence of Amiens.
Thomas Mark Chester Hann is remembered at Sunderland on S140.009, S140.010 and S140.048 part 6
