b. 15/01/1895 ? d. 3rd Q 1969 Nuneaton, Warwickshire.
DATE OF EM ACTION: 12/07/1945 Pooley Hall Colliery, Polesworth, Warwickshire.
Tom Jackson was born on 15th January 1895, though the location is unknown. Little is known about his early life, though he did serve in World War I as a Corporal in the West Yorkshire Regiment. After the war, he returned to mines and became a Deputy at the Pooley Hall Colliery in Polesworth. In the 1939 England and Wales Register he was living at 49 St Helena Road in Atherstone, Warwickshire with his wife Vera, and they had a son Stanley, and a daughter, Vera. Tom died in 1969 in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, aged 74.
EM CITATION:
On the 12th July, 1945, during ripping operations at the Pooley Hall Colliery, Polesworth, Warwickshire, a heavy fall of roof completely buried a ripper, Kenneth Head. Prompt efforts by Tom Jackson, a deputy, and Joseph Samuel Clayton, another ripper, resulted in the buried man’s head being released; he was alive and conscious though held quite fast by the fallen material. To release Head it was necessary for the rescuer to make a very restricted passage about 20 inches square through the broken material in order to prevent him from being suffocated. The support of this excavation was necessarily very improvised and did not prevent small material from running through the supports into the opening, thereby hampering the work and endangering Jackson and Clayton. At one point in the rescue the man’s head was again covered and Clayton, partially fastened, had to be released. The man’s head was again uncovered and the task of keeping it so was performed at great risk. Eventually by patient and piecemeal removal of the whole of the debris which covered him Head was released. The rescue, pursued as it was through 7 hours continuous effort in most dangerous and trying circumstances, was one of untiring and selfless endeavour to save the life of a fellow workman. Unfortunately Kenneth Head, who had displayed great courage and fortitude throughout the time he was entrapped, during which he must have been in great pain, died five days later as a result of shock.
BURIAL LOCATION: UNKNOWN.
LOCATION OF MEDAL: UNKNOWN.
