PEARSON, Thomas

Thomas Pearson was born at Old Hill and in 1914 was living with his mother, Mrs Howard, at 4 Cross Street, Blackheath. He enlisted in the Hampshires and was sent to the 12th Battalion. After a brief stay in France they were sent to Salonika in November 1915 to defend the Greeks against the Bulgarians. This was another hard-fought campaign with most of the fighting around Lake Doiran. After the long winter of 1916-17 the Allies attempted to drive the Bulgarian army out of Greece. The fighting was often fierce but subsided into trench warfare until the last campaign in 1918. At some point Private Thomas Pearson was taken prisoner and sent to a camp in, or near, Sofia, the Bulgarian capital. Here he died after the armistice with Bulgaria. He was 21 years of age and is buried in the Sofia War Cemetery (I B 10) and is commemorated on the Blackheath and Halesowen Memorials.