363 Trooper Charles David Tait – Eagle Point Died of wounds 25 January 1916

….. there are men out there under fire and I must bring them in

James and Ann Tait of Eagle Point had a large family of fourteen children. Charles was the sixth son and second last being born in 1891. He was the only one of the boys to enlist as his brothers were at least ten years older than him. Charles had been working as a labourer at Collingullie, near Wagga Wagga, NSW when three weeks before this brother’s wedding he enlisted at Rose Hill on 5 October 1914. Just before Christmas he sailed with the 7 th  Light Horse on the Ayrshire for Egypt and on 15 May 1915 he landed at Gallipoli. His official record indicates he was injured on 28 August and died the following January, but it is only in reading fellow soldiers letters home that the complete picture is understood. On Gallipoli he acted as a stretcher bearer and during a confrontation at Lone Pine he had made two trips to retrieve injured comrades when he left for a third time and was hit by a high exploding shell. His mates did not want him to go but he said, there are men out there under fire and I must bring them in. His injuries were severe. He had a dislocated, probably broken, spine and broken left ankle. His actions were regarded as heroic by his comrades. It was some days before he made it to the clearing station for treatment and another week before he was taken to the hospital ship off shore. He was then taken to the hospital at Alexandria before being admitted to the 1 st  Australian General Hospital at Cairo on 20 December. He now had advanced infections in the wounds and was suffering from salmonella poisoning and dysentery and it is here that he died at 10.30pm on 25 January just three weeks before his 25 th  birthday and was buried at the Cairo Cemetery. Three months later his mother received a letter from Sister A. Kelly who had nursed him for the time he was at Cairo in which she said I have seen brave boys, but your son was the bravest of any I have seen. His chums say the same of him. He did some splendid deeds on the Peninsula, as his officers can testify. She also said that Charlie had amazed the staff at how long he had survived with such injuries and that just two days before he died he asked her to write that he sent his love and would soon be home. Twelve months after his death the Collingullie Football Club sent an enlarged photograph of Charlie and a silver tea pot to his parents from the people of Collingullie as a mark of the esteem in which they held him and that he had not been forgotten by them.