Sydney Matthews

Sidney Albert Matthews was born at Wymondham in 1898 but a few years later his parents, Albert and Ellen, moved to Taas Ford, Low Road Tasburgh where his father ran a builders business as well as being the local undertaker. Sidney had an older brother, Mark, and two younger sisters, Mildred Mary and Ivy Maud, and all of them would have walked up Church Hill to the local school. In 1916, at age 18, Sidney chose to join the Royal Army Service Corps as a driver in "F" Company, but instead of being sent to France he was transferred by ship out to Mesopotamia, modern day Iraq, where British and Indian troops were fighting the Ottoman or Turkish army for control of the area's oil fields.

After fierce resistance, Allied troops captured Baghdad in March 1917 and Sidney would no doubt have been involved in transporting supplies, rather than in the actual fighting but in other respects he would have faced the same hazardous conditions as other combatants especially disease and the heat. Indeed the extreme summer temperatures meant that there was little fighting between May and September and by July the temperature in Baghdad and reached 50C. in the shade. Inevitably the conditions took their toll and almost as many men died from disease as died as a result of the fighting, with a further 154,000 being evacuated as a result of sickness,

As Sidney died at the height of summer on 27th July 1917 at the principal port of Basra, perhaps waiting to be evacuated, it seems likely that he was one of those whose death was for non-combat reasons. He was buried in the Basra War Cemetery, aged just 19.