About Tom

Tom Allen

At the start of the first world war, Tom was working as the head of Trinity College Oxford's mission in Stratford E15. By September, he'd enlisted in the Grenadier Guards and later in the Irish Guards. Travelling to France at the start of February 1915, he did not survive the month, being killed by an enemy shell at Cuinchy on 26th February 1915.

After hostilities ceased, a collection of his letters was gathered and published as a book by his mother - the book being the source for this blog, which carries Tom's letters to the end of February 1915.

Mary Cooke Allen, Tom Allen and his Ideals: 1887-1915. Stratford: Wilson and Whitworth. N.D.

In the letters from the front, a little over a dozen of them, Tom writes of the journey by train from Warley barracks in Brentwood, via London and then Southampton and across the channel to an unidentified port on the French coast. From there his company travelled onward by train again. Billeted at Bœuvry near La Bassee, he survived his first spell in the trenches at Cuinchy, just a few miles east, but was killed a few days after returning to the front line for the second time. In his letters he describes his experiences during those few short weeks.