T I HEALEY

1st/5th Battalion, Welsh Regiment
Service No: 241290 (formerly 3190)
Born: April 1897, Beaufort, Monmouthshire
Died: 3 November 1917, Beersheba, Egypt (aged 20)
Buried at Beersheba War Cemetery, Israel | Grave C. 18

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Thomas Ivor Healey was born in April 1897 in Beaufort, Monmouthshire, the son of Thomas and Sarah Healey. He grew up with his siblings—Ernest, Elizabeth, and Annie—in the heart of South Wales’s coal mining communities.

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By 1901, the Healey family were living in Pontlottyn, where Thomas’s father worked as a Coal Miner (Hewer). Like many working-class boys of the time, Thomas followed in his father’s footsteps and was working in the coal mines by the age of 14, as recorded in the 1911 Census.

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At some point before or during the war, Thomas moved to Troedrhiwfuwch, where he resided at the time of his enlistment in Rhymney. He joined the 1st/5th Battalion of the Welsh Regiment, initially under service number 3190, later renumbered 241290 following the army's restructuring of Territorial Force units.

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Private Healey served in the Middle Eastern theatre of the First World War, a brutal and often overlooked front of the conflict. He was killed in action on 3 November 1917, likely during the Battle of Tel el Khuweilfeh, which followed the British victory at Beersheba—a pivotal moment in the Sinai and Palestine Campaign.

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He is laid to rest in Beersheba War Cemetery, in what is today southern Israel, far from the Welsh valleys he once called home.

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🕊️ "No longer in our lives to share, but in our hearts you’re always there."