Private Ernest Ellis Tothill
24th (1st Wessex) Field Ambulance, Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC)
Killed in Action
Date of Birth: 1897
Place of Birth: Teignmouth, Devon
Date of Death: 15th August 1917, Ypres
Buried: The Huts Cemetery, Belgium; remembered on Seafront Memorial and St. James' Church Memorial Window, Teignmouth, Devon.
Awarded the 1914 Star, the British War Medal and the Victory Medal
Private Ernest Ellis Tothill age 27.
Born in 1889 the youngest son of Joseph & Frances of Bitton Street. In 1891 Ernest was living at 61 Bitton Street, the greengrocers, with his parents and two brothers, Frank and Reginald, and sister May. By 1901 the shop had become a sub-post office which his father was running with the help of his three eldest sons, Thomas, Frank and Reginald. Ernest was working as a solicitor's clerk with the Teignmouth District council in 1911 and his brother, Frank,was now running the post office with the help of one of his sisters.
Ernest attested on 11 August 1914 at Exeter with 1st Wessex Field Ambulance and transferred to 24th Field Ambulance, RAMC, service number 457153. He went to France on 11 March 1915 and was serving with them on the Dickebusch-Brandhoek roadwhen he was killed in action on 15August 1917.
Buried in The Huts Cemetery, Belgium; remembered on Seafront Memorial and St. James' Church Memorial Window, Teignmouth, Devon.
Gratuities totalling £21.15s.3d were paid to his father from 1917-1919.
"Mr and Mrs Tothill of Bitton Street Post Office received intimation about their son Private E ETothill and learnt of his death in France from his captain; he was in Wessex RAMC. Last week he was about to go on duty when he was struck in the back by a bomb from a passing plane, death was instantaneous. He was buried the following day. Youngest offour brothers Ernest volunteered shortly after outbreak of war".
Teignmouth Post - August 24 1917
"Intimation was received, on Saturday, by Mr. and Mrs. Tothill, of the Bitton-street Post Ofice. Teignmouth, from his Captain, of the death of their youngest son, Pte. E. E. Tothill, Wessex R.A.M.C., in France.
Clipping from the Western Times
It appears that on Wednesday last Pte. Tothill was about to go on duty when he was struck in the back by a bomb from a passing aeroplane, death being practically instantaneous.
He was buried the following day. Pte Tothill, who was one of four sons serving, was young and unmarried, and volunteered for service soon after the out break of the war. Prior to joining the R.A.M.C. he was a clerk in the clerks' department of the Teignmouth Urban District Council."
Western Times - August 24 1917
A Royal Army Medical Corps Field Ambulance
A Field Ambulance was not a single vehicle, but an entire mobile hospital that served in the combat zone.
Casualties from a Scottish infantry battalion of 77th Brigade being evacuated along a communication trench outside Salonika, February 1916.© IWM (Q 31794)In the First World War, at the Front Line in battle there were often vast numbers of casualties requiring immediate treatment.
The Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) operated a system that immediately addressed a patient's critical injuries near the Front, then evacuated him to a medical unit in a safer area.
To achieve this goal the RAMC had units consisting of 10 officers and 224 men. The entire company was called a Field Ambulance.
Motor ambulances and horse-drawn ambulance wagons of the RAMC collecting wounded on the Western Front © IWM (Q 9177)
The men were detailed as stretcher bearers, nursing orderlies, ambulance drivers, cooks, sanitation crew and to manage and distribute stores and water etc. The unit was divided into three equal sections, each of which could be self-sustainable, with its own tented areas, men and equipment.
Stetcher Bearers in WW1 © IWM (Q 5935)
Each Field Ambulance had to be moved to where the combat was most intense and set up there.
Men of the Army Supply Company (ASC) were attached to assist with transport.
A Field Ambulance had 66 horses and 23 wagons. After the first year of the war transport included 7 motor vehicles and a maintenance wagon.
A full strength Field Ambulance unit in the First World War had a "capacity" for 150 casualties. In times of intense battle the unit would often treat a great many more.
RAMC officers and men were unarmed, they did not carry weapons (or ammunition). Over 6,873 RAMC personnel were either killed in action or died of wounds in WW1.
Through the work of the RAMC 1.6 million wounded men were returned to the firing line to fight again.
RAMC personnel giving a wounded man water from a petrol tin in an abandoned trench. © IWM (Q 9177)
