Remembering the Fallen: on this day in 1915, Corporal Thomas Edmund John Anstey, City of London Yeomanry (Rough Riders), was killed in action at Gallipoli.

His parents’ third son, he had been raised in Wales and in England. In 1901, at the age of sixteen, he gained a position as a bank clerk with the Capital and Counties Bank, in Finsbury Circus, London. In October of 1909, he enlisted in No. 3 Troop, D Squadron, City of London Yeomanry, and was promoted to the rank of corporal in October of 1914.

In April of 1915, his regiment embarked for service in Egypt, arriving at Alexandria on the 6th of May. In August, it left one hundred officers and men to care for the horses as the remainder embarked for the fighting at Gallipoli. They landed on the 18th of August at Suvla Bay, and on the 21st advanced to Chocolate Hill, where they came under heavy fire as they took part in the attack on Hill 112. Heavy losses were suffered during the Battle of Scimitar Hill.

Corporal Anstey lost his life fifty yards from the Turkish trenches as he was involved in covering some men from the Corps of Royal Engineers. His body was recovered by two troopers, and he is buried in Green Hill Cemetery in Turkey.

Thomas, from Cardiff, was 31 years old.