Thomas Sturgess
Indian cricketer (1898-1974)
Thomas Moore Sturgess (24 September 1898 – 2 February 1974) was an Indian cricketer. A wicket-keeper, he played first-class cricket in India in the 1940s, having previously represented the Egypt national cricket team.
Biography
Born in Assam in 1898, Thomas Sturgess joined the Royal Flying Corps as a flight cadet in October 1916 and undertook his initial training at Denham and Oxford before being commissioned a Temporary Second Lieutenant on probation on 27 April 1917.
Following further training with No. 3 Reserve Squadron, No. 19 Reserve Squadron, and No. 10 Reserve Squadron in England, he was posted to France as a Flying Officer on 13 June 1917. Sturgess was next posted to his first and only operational unit, 41 Squadron RFC, which was based at Abeele, Belgium on 18 June 1917.
On 24 June 1917, Sturgess was flying F.E.8, A4925, on patrol when a piston rod broke and he force-landed behind German lines northeast of Zandvoorde but crashed on landing, breaking both right planes, though uninjured himself. He was captured by German soldiers and held at Karlsruhe, and repatriated home via Kingston_upon_Hull|Hull on 14 December 1918.
“Thomas Sturgess” enters the record as indian cricketer (1898-1974). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Thomas, Sturgess and Indian can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Thomas Sturgess” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.