The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of (3960) Private William John Tighe, 18th Battalion, First World War.

The Last Post Ceremony is presented in the Commemorative area of the Australian War Memorial each day. The ceremony commemorates more than 102,000 Australians who have given their lives in war and other operations and whose names are recorded on the Roll of Honour. At each ceremony the story behind one of the names on the Roll of Honour is told. Hosted by Jana Johnson, the story for this day was on (3960) Private William John Tighe, 18th Battalion, First World War.

3960 Private William John Tighe, 18th Battalion
KIA 5 August 1916
Story delivered 19 May 2018

Today we remember and pay tribute to Private William John Tighe.

William Tighe was the eldest son of Alfred and Elizabeth Tighe of Marrickville, Sydney. He was educated at the Petersham Superior Public School and went on to work as a labourer.
Tighe enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force in October 1915, a few months before his 30th birthday. He had obviously had a serious accident in his past, as his enlistment papers note that his right cheek was very scarred, and that he had scars on his back, shoulder and abdomen.

Tighe was posted to the 18th Battalion and, after a period of training in Australia, left for active service overseas on board the troopship Runic. He arrived in Egypt at the end of February 1916, and was there for just a few days before embarking for France in order to fight on the Western Front. Tighe spent some weeks serving with an entrenching battalion before joining the 18th Battalion in the front line near Pozières on the 4th of August 1918.

When the battalion left the front line the next day, Private Tighe was unaccounted for. There were vague reports that he had been wounded and evacuated from the front line, and Tighe’s mother was informed that he was wounded and missing. She heard nothing from either the authorities or her son for some time, and wrote to the Base Records office to say, “I don’t know what to think or do about him; it is a big worry not knowing whether he is dead or alive.”

The first clue to Private William Tighe’s fate came in the form of a parcel delivered to his parents. Marked “deceased soldier’s effects”, the package contained Tighe’s prayer book, pocket book, identity disc, and pay book. Eventually Mrs Tighe received a letter from Chaplain Pittowen, who reported having buried her son. The letter, which took some months to reach Sydney, read, “we buried him yesterday in Gordon’s Dump Cemetery … I am very sorry for you in your great loss. Your son has died in a righteous cause and God will reward him for his sacrifice.”

A little over a month later a board of enquiry determined that Private Tighe had almost certainly died of his wounds. The board had worked through a wide variety of statements saying that Tighe was in a mental hospital, or in England somewhere, before finding two stretcher bearers who had picked up Private Tighe in the front line trenches around Pozieres on the morning of 5 August, the day after he entered the front line. His left leg had been blown off at the knee. They carried him to the Regimental Aid Post and never saw him again. Given the journey back to the Field Ambulance Station was over a mile of rough track, they suggested he had died on the way.

William Tighe’s father Alfred died in February 1917, and never heard the final determination of his son’s fate. Elizabeth Tighe lost a daughter in childbirth the following year, before dying in 1919.

If Private William Tighe was ever buried in the cemetery at Gordon Dump, his grave has now been lost. Today he is commemorated on the memorial to the missing at Villers-Bretonneux. He was 30 years old.
His name is listed on the Roll of Honour on my right, among almost 62,000 Australians who died while serving in the First World War.

This is but one of the many stories of service and sacrifice told here at the Australian War Memorial. We now remember Private William John Tighe, who gave his life for us, for our freedoms, and in the hope of a better world.

Meleah Hampton
Historian, Military History Section