Tommy came from a fishing family and had fished with his father since leaving school.  He, his father and mother, Thomas Robert and Elizabeth Towse Jenkinson, lived at 49, Mitford St. in the centre of Filey and at the declaration of war on 4^th August 1914 Tommy volunteered to go with the local territorial battalion, the 5^th Yorkshire Regt. (Green Howards) to train to go to France.  Thirteen men joined this battalion including Lt. Harold Brown, Edward Ward and Richard Haxby Pearson (also casualties) and were all placed in ‘D’ Company which quickly became known as the Filey company. 

When the group eventually arrived in France, just a week before Tommy’s death they were stationed around Ypres and quickly saw very heavy fighting.  This was the 1^st Battle of Ypres where the German Army first used Mustard Gas against the Allies, inflicting horrific casualties.  Tommy was spared this, but was killed two days later in a raid on an abandoned farmhouse housing a German machine Gun nest.  His parents received a letter from Captain Thompson, the company commander, but also one from Lt. Brown, part of which read “It will be some small comfort to you that your son was a capable soldier and was popular wit all his comrades and will be missed by both them and his officers.  Please accept my deepest sympathies…”

          The machine gun nest was never taken, and Tommy’s body never recovered so he is remembered on the Menin Gate Memorial for all the soldiers who fought at Ypres, and whose bodies were lost.  He was one of the first Filey men to enlist, but also the first to die.