Driver L.T. Hacker

On a dank, November day we remember him.

We do not know the date that Ladas Tom Hacker enlisted. He could have served but a few months as by December 1915 he was dead. Still hardly a man, just a boy. Recruitment officers bent the rules, boys lied about their age, patriotism was high.

Ladas Tom Hacker was born during the early summer of 1899, the only son of Tom Hacker and his wife Ada. He was baptised at the Independent Church that once stood on the corner of Victoria Road and Bath Road and he lived all his short life at 16 Belle Vue Road.

All we know about Ladas Tom Hacker is that which is inscribed on his headstone, his military records were destroyed in September 1940 when a German bombing raid struck the War Office repository in Arnside Street, London where they were stored.

2730 Driver L.T. Hacker

Royal Field Artillery

24^th December 1915.

We know where he died from a short entry that survives in the UK, Army Registers of Soldiers’ Effects, 1901-1929 and the Radnor Street Cemetery Burial Registers. He died on Christmas Eve 1915 at Tidworth Military Hospital. His cause of death was Cerebro Spinal Fever, contracted as a result of his military service. He was 17 years old.

Hacker, L.T.

Driver 2730 3/3 Battalion Wessex Brigade, ammunition column, Royal Field Artillery.

Died 24th December 1915.

B1815 Radnor Street Cemetery, Swindon.

Tell Them of Us by Mark Sutton