While in the Netherlands it gained the name Tommy after the nickname given to British soldiers and ran for the rest of its working life with a name plate which included an explanation of the origin - "So named by drivers of the Netherlands State Railway to whom this locomotive was loaned 1947-1952".
This gentleman is called Tommy Atkins, the name given to the generic British soldier of the day.
Tommy Atkins - slang for a common soldier in the First World War
"Tommy cooker" was a nickname for a British soldier's portable stove, which was fuelled by solidified alcohol, making it smokeless but very inefficient.
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On 25 July 2009, the death of the last "Tommy" from World War I, Harry Patch (at 111 the oldest man in the United Kingdom and also in Europe), left Claude Choules as the last serviceman of the British forces in World War I.
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The Oxford English Dictionary states its origin as "arising out of the casual use of this name in the specimen forms given in the official regulations from 1815 onward"; the citation references Collection of Orders, Regulations, etc.
Tommy Dorsey | Tommy Hilfiger | Chet Atkins | Tommy Thompson | Tommy | Tommy Steele | Tommy Lee | Tommy Lee Jones | Tommy Emmanuel | Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art | Tommy Sheridan | Tommy Robredo | Tommy Chong | Tommy Douglas | Rodney Atkins | Tommy Makem | Tommy Cooper | Tommy Boy Entertainment | Tommy Mottola | Tommy Henrich | Tommy Flanagan | Tommy Tune | Tommy Lyons | Tommy LiPuma | Tommy James and the Shondells | Tommy Franks | Martin Atkins | Tommy Tutone | Tommy Tuberville | Tommy Spinks |
It can now be affirmed that the British Tommies were right all along in the first line of their version of the Colonel Bogey March, they were although manifestly mistaken in the last—that is to say, unless Goebbels' six children were the progeny of adoption, paternal surrogacy or some hitherto unconsidered, presumably unpalatable "Gott mit uns" form of divine intervention.
Much of Giles's World War II work had been cartoons featuring Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and the typical British Tommy, but he felt the need to expand after the War, hence the family.