Percival Ernest Thompson

Born: 1896

Died: 29 October 1918

Rank and Regiment: Private in the 976th MT Company of the Royal Army Service Corps

Resting Place: Tehran War Cemetery, Iran

Memorial: St. Peter and St. Paul, Wramplingham, United Kingdom

Percival Thompson was the youngest son of William and Rebecca Thompson and was born in Bungay in 1896. His father was a police constable who was born in Wramplingham and had lived in Stone Cottages. In the 1911 Census, Percival’s occupation is recorded as “telegraph work”.

He enlisted in the 976th Mechanical Transport Company, Royal Army Service Corps, in Ilford. The Army Service Corps supplied the food, equipment and ammunition to the soldiers using horses and motor vehicles, railways and waterways. Percival was in one of the Mechanical Transport Companies that operated in a wide variety of roles, such as being attached to the heavy artillery as Ammunition Columns, Motor Ambulance Convoys, or Bridging and Pontoon Units. He served in Mesopotamia where the conditions were appalling not only due to the extremes of temperature (48° C was common) but the flies, mosquitoes and other vermin that led to appalling levels of sickness and death through disease.

The war with Turkey ended on 30 October 1918, and Percival died on Tuesday 29 October 1918 aged 22. He is buried at Tehran War Cemetery and is remembered on the Wramplingham War Memorial.

Percival’s younger brother William also served in the Great War, enlisting in the Norfolk Regiment in August 1914. He was discharged from the Army in 1917 as “no longer physically fit”, having sustained a gun shot wound to his shoulder in August 1916. He died in 1922.

Tehran War Cemetery, Iran