Tom Blake (1898-April 6, 1917) was a British Army lance corporal who served in the 8th Battalion, East Surrey Regiment during World War I. On April 6, 1917, he and Lance Corporal Will Schofield were sent to warn the 2nd Battalion, Devonshire Regiment (in which Blake's brother Joseph Blake was serving) not to attack the former German front line amid the Germans' secret withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line, but Blake was killed early in the mission when a downed German pilot whom he had rescued fatally stabbed him in the abdomen.
Biography[]
Blake and Schofield on their mission.
Thomas Blake was born in 1898, the younger brother of Joseph Blake. He joined the British Army during World War I rather than continue his studies for the Anglican priesthood, and he was assigned to the 8th Battalion, East Surrey Regiment, where he befriended Will Schofield and rose to the rank of Lance Corporal. Blake was on leave while Schofield fought at the Battle of the Somme, leaving Blake with a quiet jealousy towards Schofield and a desire to win a medal himself. In April 6, 1917, General John Erinmore summoned Blake for a special assignment, and Blake selected Schofield as his companion.
Erinmore informed the two men that the Germans had withdrawn from the front lines to form a second defensive position, the Hindenburg Line, which was six miles deep and heavily-fortified; aerial reconnaissance suggested that the Germans were intending to lure the British into a trap and inflict heavy losses against any follow-up British offensive. Blake and Schofield were sent to deliver a message to Lieutenant-Colonel Benedict Mackenzie of the 2nd Battalion, Devonshire Regiment (the unit in which Tom's brother Joseph was serving) to call off his attack on the Germans, saving 1,600 lives in doing so.
The two men were then ordered to set out immediately, securing equipment and directions from Lieutenant Andrew Leslie along the way. Other soldiers in the trenches doubted that the mission could succeed, with Leslie saying that they might win medals, and that there was nothing like pieces of tin to comfort soldiers' widows. The two friends crossed no man's land, where Schofield injured his hand on barbed wire, and the two men noticed that the Germans had destroyed their trenches and artillery pieces. A German tripwire in one of their dugouts was triggered by a rat, but Blake was able to save Schofield from the rubble, and the two made their way out of the German defenses and to an abandoned farmhouse, where they filled their canteens with milk and watched as a dogfight between two Royal Flying Corps planes and a Luftstreitkraefte plane downed the German pilot Valentin Wildner.
Blake's death.
When Wildner was shot down and crashed into the farmhouse, Blake and Schofield rescued the German pilot from his burning cockpit, and, as Schofield exited the farmhouse to investigate the aftermath of the dogfight, a paranoid Wildner struggled with Blake and fatally stabbed him in the abdomen. Schofield shot the pilot dead with two bullets from his Enfield rifle, and he cradled his friend Blake in his arms; when Blake asked if he would die, Schofield lamented that he would.
Blake gave Schofield his pocket watch and told him to complete the mission and write to his mother to ensure that she knew that he didn't die alone.