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He was known for his work with the Western Mail and Echo, but John Thomas was also dedicated to organising reunions to keep his old Army friends together. Born in Barry on July 30, 1916, he had five sisters. Their father was a signalman at the train station.
He attended Romilly Road Boys' School before taking a secretarial course.
After that he joined the Western Mail and Echo, selling copies of the Echo at Barry Dock.
It was a job he continued to do before the war, later taking up an assistant's position there.
When war broke out he volunteered to join the Army.
Within a week of signing up he was in France, to the surprise of his parents who made a visit to Aldershot to look for him after not hearing from him.
Mr Thomas was part of the British Expeditionary Force which went out to Nantes and St Nazaire.
He had a lucky escape at one point when a boat he was about to board, the Lancastria, was bombed, with the loss of thousands of lives.
He returned to Britain, where he joined the 73rd Field Company Royal Engineers.
They went out to Normandy before the D-Day landings to clear obstacles on the beach and then moved on through France, Holland and Germany.
The company disbanded after that, and Mr Thomas was one of the last to leave, in 1946.
He returned to work at the Western Mail and Echo and was offered the branch managership at Bridgend, working mainly in circulation.
Mr Thomas married Margaret Grace, known as Peggy, in 1941 and the couple had two children, Peter, now 53, and Chris, 59.
In 1956 a chance meeting in Cardiff with another member of the 73rd Field Company inspired him to organise a reunion in London.
More than 100 men turned up, and the reunions are still being run to this day.
Next year's will be run by his son Chris, who said: 'He gave tremendous service and the reunions were held all over the country.'
He retired from the Western Mail and Echo in 1981.
As well as his sons, he leaves grandchildren Gareth, 25, Eleanor, 21, and four-year-old George.
Mrs Thomas passed away in 1987.
His funeral is taking place on Friday at Coychurch Crematorium, Bridgend.
Western Morning News (UK)
Copyright 2004 Northcliffe Newspapers Company
September 15, 2004
Medals recall hero of secret disaster
It was dubbed the secret disaster - the sinking of the Lancastria with the loss of as many as 4,000 lives during the evacuation from France in 1940.
Because of the scale of the disaster, Sir Winston Churchill forbade publication of the news in the interests of public morale and full details are still sealed under the Official Secrets Act until 2040.
Among the 2,477 survivors was Lieutenant Colonel John Cayzer Medlicott-Vereker, of Trewarne Manor, Trelill, near Bodmin, who heroically kept firing his bren gun until the angle of the sinking decks brought the water to his knees.
Lt Col Medlicott-Vereker's bravery during the worst tragedy in British maritime history, which cost more lives than those of the Titanic and Lusitania combined, earned him the Military Cross.
Now his MC and other campaign medals, together with the campaign medals of his three sons - all of whom died in the war - are to surface at auction.
The MC group, plus those presented posthumously to Lieutenant John H R Medlicott-Vereker, Major Derek S Medlicott-Vereker, and Midshipman Patrick B Medlicott-Vereker, are expected to fetch a modest GBP 2000 at auctioneers Ewbanks in Woking, Surrey, on September 30.
Lt Col Medlicott-Vereker returned fire as the Lancastria sank beneath him after the cruise ship was repeatedly hit off St Nazaire during his evacuation with the British Expeditionary Force. Somewhere between 6,000 and 9,000 were on board, although the ship's official capacity was 3,000.
The Lancastria sank within 20 minutes as more than 1,000 tons of fuel leaked into the sea surrounding the floundering ship and was set ablaze, possibly by incendiary bombs dropped from German planes.
Lt Col Medlicott-Vereker's MC group also includes the 1914-18 Medal, the 1939-45 Defence and War Medals, the 1939-45 Star and the 1953 Coronation Medal.
Born in 1895, he served in the First World War and later settled in Cornwall as a flower farmer. He died in Trelill in 1962.
Lt John Medlicott-Vereker, RN, was killed on December 21, 1940, aged 26, when his Skua was shot down over Norway. His brother Patrick was killed, aged 17, almost a year to the day later when HMS Neptune was sunk by mines off Tripoli.
The third brother, Derek, a major in the 4th Prince of Wales' Own Gurkha Rifles, is buried in the Assisi war cemetery alongside comrades who fell in the advance north of Rome following the Allied invasion of the Italian mainland in September 1943.
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