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Regiment: Manchester Regt.
Died: 11 January 1917 aged 21 in France. Killed in action.
Cemetery: Beaumont-Hamel British Cemetery B 75
Son of Percy Wright (Retired Farmer) and Annie Rebecca Thorniley, Shooter's Hill, Wem, Salop, and Hole Head, Dawlish, Devon. b. 1896.
Upper V—VI. Minor Scholar. School Prefect. Head of House. XXII Football.
Great War, 2nd Lieutenant Manchester Regt. 1914, Captain.
'Upon leaving Malvern, Arthur Thorniley was almost at once gazetted to the Manchester Regiment; and after spending a short time in training in England, he went out with his battalion to France in November 1915, and was made a Company Commander in the following year. From the first he proved himself an excellent officer, and, after being wounded in November 1916, was awarded the Military Cross in the New Year's Honours Lists this year. At the time of his death he was acting Major, and had gained the esteem of all who were working with him. His Colonel writes: "He was positively one of the bravest of the brave, and a fine example of one who was able to pull himself together, and go again into a fight as if it was the first time. In this he was a valuable asset to the Battalion; though so young, he had great capacity for command, and exerted it to my entire satisfaction. In action he was always not only brave but wonderfully cool, and his reports to me of passing events were unusually lucid. In regard to the details of his death, I hear, in having gained his objective, he went up to where two Germans, who had surrendered and were 'hands up" were standing, and that then a third German shot him. This act was then and there avenged, for his men simply bayonetted every man they saw. I can well understand how they felt, for every man in the battalion knew what his loss meant."' (Malvernian, Mar 1917).