Lieutenant, London Regiment
Born: July 24th 1889
Died: December 1st 1917
Age at Death: 28
Died of Wounds, Gaza, Palestine, December 1st 1917.
A donation to the memorial statue has been made in honour of this soldier by Stephen Yiduo Chen (Sc. 2011-2016).
Grave Reference: T60 Jerusalem War Cemetery
Family
Sister: Voilet Henderson Tolson- marrried Garnett Price Fletcher.
Mother: Anna Paton Henderson
Uncle: James Senior Tolson, Australia
Great Grandfather: James Tolson of Dalton, Huddersfield
Lieutenant George Henderson Tolson
George Tolson was born on July 24th 1889 in Kensington, London. He was the only son and second child of George Tolson, a businessman, and his wife Anna (nee Henderson). It appears that the family moved to Hove in the early 1900s where Tolson was briefly a pupil at the College, although his sister Violet remained at a school in London.
Tolson’s career after leaving the school is unclear although there was clearly some connection with Canada as his name appears on an embarkation list for Montreal in 1913 and furthermore it appears that he was resident in Canada when war broke out in 1914 because he initially volunteered for service with the Canadian Expeditionary Force, reaching the ranks of Sergeant by September 1915. It was then that he transferred to the London Regiment and received a commission as a 2nd Lieutenant. He was attached to the 18th Battalion, London Regiment (London Irish), although he had no obvious Irish connections, which formed part of 60th Division. After a brief period in France in Summer 1916 was sent to Salonika in November 1916 and then to Egypt and Palestine in July 1917, during the course of which he was promoted. In late November 1917 he was involved in the early stages of the Jerusalem Campaign and was seriously wounded in the course of the desperate Ottoman counter-attacks which took place from 28th November onwards. On 1st December 1917 he died of his wounds in a field hospital in the Jerusalem area.
His grave is in the Jerusalem War Cemetery, Israel.
Source: LEST WE FORGET PROJECT, Brighton College 2014/15