Thomas Hempseed, born c1882 in Dunfermline was a local postman and footballer with Morton and Dunfermline, lost his leg but remained, at least in public, remarkably upbeat: “My football days are over; a centre half on crutches might serve as a novelty to a jaded public but he would be of little real value to his side as a player. Yet, although I am minus a leg – and my trusty right leg at that – I hope I am sportsman enough to accept my fate and to be happy in the knowledge that otherwise I am hale and hearty, as merry as a cricket, and as frisky, almost – I use the qualifying word knowing my limitations – as a young kitten”

Served at Home, India and South Africa 1900-1908. Wounded, presumed missing 26/8/14. Discharged 31/1/1916.

 It was on the fifth day of the battle that disaster overwhelmed me. We were at the Chateau when a party of the 2ndArgylls were mowed down by the enemy’s machine gun fire. I was hopelessly crippled, the right leg being riddled with bullets, and the left also having been hit. I lost consciousness for a brief space, and when I came to myself I found that I was surrounded by the dead bodies of my comrades of a few hours before. It was sometime ere I fully took in the situation, and then when I realised that I had been left behind mental anguish was added to physical uffering. For three days and nights I lay in that terrible field of the dead. Sometimes I think I might have gone mad but for the fact that, as the hours dragged slowly past, I became aware that there was yet another living soul in that field besides myself. In my agony of mind and body as I writhed on the ground there sounded in my ears the unmistakeable tones and broad accent of a fellow Scot.
Sweeter than any music did that sound on my ear. In a moment I had answered. In another, helpless as we were, we were trying to distinguish each other in the failing light and among the many who had fought their last campaign. Wattie, is it you? I cried. Tom, came the response, it’s yersel. It was my comrade Private Walter Nelson, Wattie Nelson, of Dalry, a worthy gallant frae the Burns country, wounded in the lungs, but ‘unco cheery’ for a that. I verily believe that but for this companionship neither Wattie nor myself would have emerged from that awful three days ordeal and retained our sanity.
We were divided by about fifty yards. Neither of us could move, neither of us had food or drink. But we did what we could to prevent each other giving way to despair, and were, on the whole, as cheerful almost as Mark Tapley would have been under similar circumstances. However we were pretty well exhausted when at length succour reached us in the shape of two old French civilians who had been sent out to search the battlefield if perchance wounded might still be there. I remember seeing the grey beards and the kindly eyes of my rescuers – vague, spectral beings such as we meet with in a dream – and then I knew no more until I woke up in a hospital ward, where pretty French nurses, who, despite the German occupation, remained behind, flitting quietly about in their nun-like attire, and where on nice, clean, wholesome beds, like the one on which I reposed, were many in similar plight to myself. Now I am no friend of the Germans and I have suffered much discomfort and contumely at their hands, but this I will say, that the German surgeon who took me under his special charge at the Chateux hospital was as skilful as he was tender and kind. 

Newspaper Clippings relating to Thomas Hempseed

Hempseed, Thomas

Hempseed, Thomas 1