1914-1918 First World War Centenary

3 November 2018

UNTIL THE DAY DAWNS “WHO DIES IF ENGLAND LIVE?”   

Thomas Cambidge was born on 24 June 1891 to Jane and Thomas Cambidge, a Shropshire farming family. He appears on the 1901 and 1911 census with the family at New House, Kinnerley, Oswestry.

He entered Harper Adams Agricultural College in October 1907, aged 16, and left on 24 July 1909, having passed the College Certificate.  The 1911 census records that he was a farmer/son working on farm.

Another relative, Thomas Burnup Cambidge, was one of our earliest students 1902-1904.  Both were related to Harper Adams alumni, Henry Cambidge (1943-44) and his son, Betton Cambidge (Foundation/HND Ag 1975-79). 

Thomas Cambidge served with the Shropshire Yeomanry (1508), King's Shropshire Light Infantry (230077) and the 2nd/4th Bn., Queen's Own (Royal West Kent Regiment).

http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/D6562944

More information about his military service may be found here [we have not confirmed this information]:  

https://www.facebook.com/KSLI.Battlefields.tours/posts/ex-ksli-men-who-were-killed-or-wounded-during-november-1917-after-transferring-t/1734107103269115/

Thomas Cambidge died on 3 November 1917, age 26, and is remembered with honour at the Beersheba War Cemetery (Cemetery/memorial reference: G. 5)

https://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty/644354/cambidge,-thomas/

By October 1917, General Allenby's force had been entrenched in front of a strong Turkish position along the Gaza-Beersheba road for some months, but they were now ready to launch an attack with Beersheba as its first objective. On 31 October, the attack was carried out by the XXth Corps (10th, 53rd, 60th and 74th Divisions) on the west, and the Desert Mounted Corps on the east. That evening the 4th Australian Light Horse Brigade charged over the Turkish trenches into the town. The cemetery was made immediately on the fall of the town, remaining in use until July 1918, by which time 139 burials had been made. It was greatly increased after the Armistice when burials were brought in from a number of scattered sites and small burial grounds. The cemetery now contains 1,241 Commonwealth burials of the First World War, 67 of them unidentified.

https://www.cwgc.org/find-a-cemetery/cemetery/71100/beersheba-war-cemetery/

https://www.harper-adams.ac.uk/news/202514/dedication-of-new-memorial-to-alumni-who-fell-in-first-world-war