Brigadier, Royal Artillery
Born: December 31st 1899
Died: October 23rd 1944
Age at Death: 44
Died of wounds, October 23rd 1944
Medals / Honours: Distinguished Service Order
School Prefect 1916
John Anthony, known to all as Tony, was born on the last day of the 19th century to John Audley Thicknesse, a lieutenant-colonel in the army who was killed on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, and his wife Phyllis (née Woodcock), of Cuckfield, Sussex. He won a Divinity prize at the College, and was also a member of the Debating Society at the same time as Aubertin Mallaby.
He initially wanted to become a doctor, but the death of his father changed his plans by leaving his family without the means to pay for his training, so he joined the army, serving with the Royal Artillery. In 1928 he married Joyce Tupman, who bore him four children: Margaret, Joyce, Jane and Philip. During the war he took part in the Western Desert campaign, during which he received the Distinguished Service Order. The citation read that he carried out ‘a series of daring and skilful reconnaissances of the enemy’s position’ over ‘bare stony desert’ in an area ‘infested by low-flying ME 109s which, on one occasion, shot the front tyres of his Jeep to pieces’. Dangerous adventure in a jeep was, it appears, a Thicknesse habit: he also drove a jeep through enemy fire to see his brother Ralph for the last time in the Western Desert and, in 1944, while in command of the 59th Army Group Royal Artillery in the Netherlands, took one on a reconnaissance of the enemy position. On that occasion, the habit proved his undoing: he was wounded and captured by the Germans, and died of complications from his wound.
The post-war postscript to his death shows the vast wellspring of humanity that survived the war in Europe, despite the suffering and cruelty. His family was contacted by the nurse who had looked after him, Ank Stumpel, who stayed with them for three months, telling them of how happy Thicknesse had been with his family life, and by the German doctor who had treated him, who explained the circumstances of his death. Thicknesse is buried at Dordrecht General Cemetery in Holland. He is a distant cousin of Oliver Thicknesse, a Classics master at the College at the time of writing.