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Carlisle Clinton TAINSH

Regimental number6641
Place of birthDublin, South Australia
SchoolGlanville Public School, South Australia
ReligionMethodist
OccupationFarmer
AddressYannanee Siding, via Port Lincoln, South Australia
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation24
Height5' 10.25"
Weight140 lbs
Next of kinMother, Mrs B Tainsh, Murat Bay, West Coast, South Australia
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date26 September 1916
Place of enlistmentAdelaide, South Australia
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name27th Battalion, 19th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/44/5
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Adelaide, South Australia, on board HMAT A28 Miltiades on 24 January 1917
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll27th Battalion
Other details from Roll of Honour CircularAttended the NCO School before leaving South Australia, and obtained a Sergeant's qualification certificate.
FateKilled in Action 9 October 1917
Place of death or woundingFrance
Age at death25
Age at death from cemetery records25
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 23), Belgium

The Menin Gate Memorial (so named because the road led to the town of Menin) was constructed on the site of a gateway in the eastern walls of the old Flemish town of Ypres, Belgium, where hundreds of thousands of allied troops passed on their way to the front, the Ypres salient, the site from April 1915 to the end of the war of some of the fiercest fighting of the war.

The Memorial was conceived as a monument to the 350,000 men of the British Empire who fought in the campaign. Inside the arch, on tablets of Portland stone, are inscribed the names of 56,000 men, including 6,178 Australians, who served in the Ypres campaign and who have no known grave.

The opening of the Menin Gate Memorial on 24 July 1927 so moved the Australian artist Will Longstaff that he painted 'The Menin Gate at Midnight', which portrays a ghostly army of the dead marching past the Menin Gate. The painting now hangs in the Australian War Memorial, Canberra, at the entrance of which are two medieval stone lions presented to the Memorial by the City of Ypres in 1936.

Since the 1930s, with the brief interval of the German occupation in the Second World War, the City of Ypres has conducted a ceremony at the Memorial at dusk each evening to commemorate those who died in the Ypres campaign.

Panel number, Roll of Honour,
  Australian War Memorial
111
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: William and Bertha TAINSH, Murat Bay, South Australia
Other details

War service: Western Front

Embarked Adelaide, 24 January 1917; disembarked Devonport, England, 27 March 1917; marched into 7th Training Bn, Rollestone, 28 March 1917.

Proceeded overseas to France, 25 September 1917; taken on strength, 27th Bn, in the field, Belgium, 5 October 1917.

Killed in action, 9 October 1917.

Buried; grave subsequently lost.

Statement, Red Cross File No 2690103L, 6595 Pte H.W. MARSHALL, A Company, 27th Bn, 2 April 1918: 'Tainsh was a new reinforcement and was stretcher bearing on the next post to me in the Passchendaele stunt from 1st dressing station [sic] backward, I thing, when he was killed. I did not see it.'

Second statement, 6556 Pte I.J. CUTCHIE, C Company, 37th Bn, 1 April 1918: 'I knew Pte Tainsh he came with me from Adelaide in the 19th to 27th reinforcement on the "Miltiades" on 24th January 1917. We had only reached France a few days on the 9th Octr when we were put on as S/Bs on the Ypres Sector. I was alongside him when he was killed instantly by shell, it was dark, and Fritz was putting up a barrage. I helped to place his body under cover and took his effects and handed them to a cobber of his, Pte Fotheringham now in the 27th Battn. His paybook I handed in to the 19th Battn. He was not attached to any Company.'

Third statement, 6046 Pte J. BRYAN, A Company, 27th Bn, 16 April 1918: 'Tainsh had only just joined the Battn and was sent up S/Bearing and on the 9th Octr as he was carrying out a wounded man at Ypres, I saw him killed outright by a shell. I think he would be sure to be buried as it was three D/stations behind the line where he was killed. I left directly after. Tainsh was tall, fair, about 20, came from Yannines near my home at Port Lincoln. He had a farm, I knew him well.'

Fourth statement, 6594 Pte C. MANN, D Company, 27th Bn, 15 May 1918: 'He and I were told off as stretcher bearers and were acting in that capacity at the time he was killed, but I am sorry to say I cannot give you very much information regarding him, as I was not in the same stretcher party as he. However, from what I can learn from other men who were on the same job at the time, Pte Tainsh was killed by the explosion of a shell and died instantaneously. He was buried in the field where he fell but that was in territory now occupied by the Germans.'

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal
SourcesNAA: B2455, TAINSH Carlisle Clinton
Red Cross File No 2690103L

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