A diminutive man with big dreams

Alan Arias and and his wife, Joyce, found Harry Thridgould’s sword when they were moving.

Photos courtesy of Art Mattson

Corporal Harry Thridgould was officially the shortest man to fight in WWI.

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Folks living in the Town of Hempstead have little idea that the Rockville Cemetery, is an amazing historical resource — a resource that should be experienced by everyone.
A few weeks ago, both the cemetery and its Bristol and Mexico Monument were placed on the New York State Register of Historic Places, — and for good reason. Of all the wonderful stories that can be told about the Rockville Cemetery (such as the married minister who ran away with a choir girl, or the evil captain of the ship Mexico who abandoned ship and left over 100 passengers to freeze to death), the story of Harry Thridgould is one of the best. And it is one that I learned just recently when I got a call from Joyce and Alan Arias of Baldwin.
The Ariases are off to North Carolina, and were going through some of their “old stuff.” What they eventually turned over to me was the diminutive sword of the even more diminutive Corporal Harry Thridgould, a friend of Alan’s father.
Joyce and Alan informed me that Harry is buried in the Rockville Cemetery. They had news clippings that told of his moving to New York from England, but then rushing back home to enlist when World War I broke out in 1914. But there was a problem: Harry was only 4’ 9” and the minimum cut-off height was 5’3”.
One 5’2” coal miner was so upset at being rejected that he challenged every man in the recruiting office to a fight. It took eight men to pull him off the first man he grabbed. So the British government decided to form a “Bantam Battalion” of shorter men who wanted to enlist. Harry immediately reapplied.
But he was still too short because the official cutoff was set at 4’ 10”. It is not known how, whether by standing on his toes or wearing thick-soled boots, but somehow Harry got in, and became officially the shortest man to fight in the war.
Thridgould’s military career
Thridgould fought for four years in the trenches. Once, he woke up after being knocked out, to find a dead comrade lying on his right, and a critically wounded man on his left. After the war he returned to Long Island, and worked as a mixologist (a bartender) at a hotel in Sayville, and then as a carpenter in Rockaway. That’s where he befriended Alan Arias’ father and bequeathed him his sword.