Thomas Deakes of Dunscroft
Thomas Deakes, of Dunscroft, was one of many King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry soldiers who died in Italy during the Second World War. This was a long and drawn out conflict covering most of the last two years of the war, often in rough, mountainous country and in hot summers and cold winters. After the war ended, it slowly became more and more practical for those men’s parents, children, and spouses to visit their graves, often with the help of charity organisations like the British Legion, now the Royal British Legion.
Thomas Deakes was born in Doncaster in 1912. He was the son of Edward and Elizabeth Ann Deakes. By the start of the Second World War he was married to Dora Deakes, and they lived together in Doncaster.
Thomas was 27 when the Second World War began, and he found himself serving in the 2/4th Battalion first as a private and then a lance corporal. The 2/4th were deployed in France early in the war but returned to the UK for training. They landed in Algiers in early 1943 and fought across north Africa until the autumn. They then landed at Salerno, south of Naples in southern Italy on September 9.
At some point in Italy Thomas acquired this badge, from a skiing school in Ravascletto, a town the north-east of the country, near the border with Austria. King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry Collection, Heritage Doncaster.
The early part of the push into Italy saw a lot of fighting and Thomas was killed on September 25. He was 31. Thomas was buried in a cemetery near Salerno, and once the war ended his mother Elizabeth went to efforts to visit her son’s grave.
The letter sent to Elizabeth and Edward Deakes from Buckingham Palace, offering their condolences for the death of Thomas. King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry Collection, Heritage Doncaster.
In Britain many schemes to visit graves were set up, with the biggest and most popular managed by the British Legion. The Legion had been set up in the 1920s as a charity and merger of multiple organisations devoted to ex-servicemen. Today it’s possibly most well-known for its Poppy Appeal that it runs in the run up to Remembrance Day each year. After the Second World War it began to organise and run trips to cemeteries across Europe to allow the families of the deceased a chance to see their loved ones’ graves. In June 1949 Elizabeth had this chance.
This letter was sent to Elizabeth and tells her what to expect in terms of transport and expense for the trip. King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry Collection, Heritage Doncaster.
The letter claims that, due to issues obtaining other transport in mainland Europe, visits were to be made by air. They also organised no trips to cemeteries in Sicily in June and August, “owing to the extreme heat”. Despite the summer warmth, Elizabeth found herself in Salerno in the middle of July, having flown to Naples on the 16 July. A surviving photograph from her visit can be found in the KOYLI Museum, in the Danum Gallery, Library and Museum.
Items on display at the Danum Gallery, Library and Museum. King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry Collection, Heritage Doncaster.
Nowadays the Salerno War Cemetery can be visited at any time, as it remains open and publicly accessible every day. It contains 1851 soldiers from across the Commonwealth of Nations, as well as a small number of non-Commonwealth burials. A little over 100 of those buried remain unidentified to this day. This is not unique to this cemetery, and ceremonies to remember the unidentified dead are common across Europe and beyond.
Have you ever visited a war cemetery, perhaps in Italy or beyond? Or do you have relatives who served with the KOYLI in the Second World War? We’d love to hear from you. You can get in touch with us on our social media, or at [email protected].
All images of objects from the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry Collection are shared under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0), credit to Heritage Doncaster.