Thomas Tuck of Nantyglo - war hero or rogue?

The two lives of Thomas Tuck of Nantyglo also known as Private John Buckley, 1st battalion of South Wales Borderers Regiment:
Our First World War research volunteers have been investigating the lives and families of names on local memorials. This has thrown up some interesting cases including that of a Nantyglo collier called Thomas Tuck who is memorialised on the cenotaph in Brynmawr and on a church memorial plaque at Saint Anne’s in Nantyglo.
Shortly after the birth of Thomas’ 5th child, he appears to have left his wife, Harriet Ann and their 3 surviving young children in 1904, and joined the South Wales Borderers under an assumed name, John Buckley!
After serving abroad in India and South Africa, Thomas Tuck married another woman, Martha Selina Timson, in Bristol in 1913 following his demobilisation to the army reserve in 1912. With his ‘new wife’, Thomas then moved to Alma Street in Brynmawr and worked at the California Colliery in Nantyglo. It’s surprising that Thomas Tuck wasn’t convicted for bigamy at this time but there may have been more to this story and his anonymity may have been protected.
In any event, Thomas Tuck was mobilised as soon as war was declared in August 1914 and was killed on 31 October 1914 at the Battle of Ghelevelt near Ypres – a report of which appeared in the local paper with no hint of the soldier’s ‘complicated’ history.
Meanwhile, Thomas Tuck’s ‘first’ wife, Harriet Ann Tuck seems to have begun a relationship with a steel-worker, Thomas Williams, in Ebbw Vale and they had had 2 children together by 1911; subsequently, Harriet Ann and Thomas Williams married in 1916 presumably in the safe knowledge that it was legal to do so after the death of Thomas Tuck!
Of the 3 children from Harriet’s first marriage, their eldest son was living with his paternal grandparents in Queen Street, Nantyglo in 1911 but the two youngest, both girls, were adopted by childless couples before 1911; one lived at Abertillery Road, Blaina and the other in Cwmcelyn.
Thomas Tuck’s second ‘wife’, Martha Selina eventually returned to Bristol (and who could blame her!) where she died in 1938 aged 67. Like many war widows, she never re-married.