Letters, Thomas Arthur (1893 - 1915)

Lieutenant, 3rd Bn. Gordon Highlanders

Buried at Le Touret Memorial

Commemorated at City of Glasgow Roll of Honour at Glasgow City Chambers

He was born at Beaufort, Cape Colony, on 12th July 1893 to Jessie and Thomas Letters. He died, aged twenty-one, on a battlefield on the Western Front, on 13th March 1915. Thomas Arthur Letters made quite an impression on his contemporaries in the short space between these events.

The Glasgow University Magazine remembered him as academically brilliant and as a young man who, from his colonial home across the seas had brought 'a genial personality and a fresh, clean vigour which made him loved and respected by all who knew him during his residence here.' Thomas was already a graduate when he arrived in Glasgow to study Medicine. He had a BA from the Cape of Good Hope, for which the University Court on 7th November 1912 granted him exemption from sitting the First Professional Exam in Medicine.

On 13th December the Court also credited his passes in Chemistry, Natural Philosophy and Biology from his previous degree, allowing him to fast-track his studies in Science at Glasgow. Thus, while studying for his MB ChB he was able to accumulate sufficient passes in the Science Faculty to entitle him to graduate BSc on 29th October 1914.

By the time he first matriculated at Glasgow his father, Thomas, a teacher, had died, and Thomas made his home with his mother at 198 Garrioch Road, Glasgow. He seemed to have been a very busy young man. He was a member of the OTC and was known for giving his best in work and play. For many, according to the University Magazine, 'the most lasting picture of Tommy Letters will be of him sprinting through the cheering lines when he won for Glasgow the "blue-ribbon" of the Inter 'Varsity OTC Sports'.

He was equally diligent and competitive in his studies. In the two years in which he took classes in Medicine, he was a regular prize-winner and gained First Class certificates in Anatomy, Embryology and Physiology. He won the Arnott Prize in Physiological Physics in 1913. It was no exaggeration to say that 'One almost cries out in agony to think that a career which promised so much towards the conservation of human life should be so cut short in this ruthless extermination of life'.

Like many young men, he put his promising education on hold to fight a war and instead of returning to University to continue his medical studies in the session 1914-1915 he took a commission as Second Lieutenant in the 3rd Battalion of the Gordon Highlanders. The initial news early in 1915 was that Tommy was 'missing, believed killed'. Confirmation that he had been killed in action followed, but few details. The life and death of Lieutenant Tommy Letters is commemorated at Le Touret, among the names of those whose graves are unknown.

Reproduced with permission from the University of Glasgow Roll of Honour: http://www.universitystory.gla.ac.uk/ww1-intro/