Thomas Henry Heath was born in late 1892 at Bovey Tracey, in Devon, one of ten children of Francis, a clay miner, and Emma Heath of 24 Station Road, Bovey Tracey. At the time of the 1911 Census, he was employed as an earthenware packer by Bovey Pottery Co Ltd.

Thomas enlisted in August 1914 and first went overseas, to Egypt, in December 1917. He moved to France with his battalion the following April and, aged 25, was one of 48 of the unit’s other-ranks killed in action on 20 July 1918, during the Battle of Tardenois.

Originally buried on the battlefield, Thomas’s body was identified by his identity disc after the war and reburied in Marfaux British Cemetery, in France, on 1 September 1919. He is commemorated on the parish church and civic war memorials at Bovey Tracey and by the local place name Heath Walk, TQ13 9GD. Similarly commemorated on the war memorials at Bovey Tracey is Private Wilfred Bowden, also of the 1/5th Devons, who was killed on the same day as Thomas.

Two of Thomas’s brothers also served in the Army during the Great War: older brother Charles in first the Devonshire Regiment before transfer to the Royal Army Medical Corps, and younger brother William, a pre-war Territorial soldier, in the Devonshires.