Sergeant John Tighe
86262 Royal Engineers 170th Tunneling Coy
Formerly 5320 Irish Guards
Killed by a mad comrade 5th August 1917, aged 25
Lived at 39 Lyndhurst Road
Buried in Noeux
les Mines Communal Cemetery, France - II.G.27
Burnley Express
15th August
1917
You may be interested in this that I found by
chance at a website http://roadstothegreatwar-ww1.blogspot.co.uk/
2015/02/remembering-veteran-hughie-dodd-aif.html
It is an extract from the diary of an Australian who was in the 170th
Tunnellers (the same Company as the Tighes) plus a response from someone
who had read it.
KaraFebruary 22, 2015 at 6:34 PM
Having had an interest in the Tunnellers of the NZEF, I took a look at
Hughie's diary and was shocked to read the following:
5 August 1917
This evening about twenty past nine, someone fired a shot across the square
and Jack Tighe went across to see who it was. It panned out to be a regular
Roughie called Jock Hall. He pulled a revolver out and put it to Tighe's
breast and shot him. This Hall has told the OC to take him out and shoot
him, as he didn't care what happened. I don't think he will shoot any
more men as he will be well looked after now. What I can't make out of
it, he wanted to get a Sergeant no matter who it was.
September 5
This chap’s got seven years by Court Martial.
Hughie wrote so casually about the shooting, it was not clear if Jack Tighe was killed, although a point blank shot to the chest certainly implied it would have been a fatal shot. The sentence of a mere seven years also made me doubt death was the outcome. I looked for a TIGHE, AIF, died August 1917, no result. I looked at four men in the AIF, all John Tighe by name, no results. Went back to CWGC and searched without specifying AIF.
Tragically, Sergeant John TIGHE,86262, of the Royal Engineers, 10th Tunnelling Company, was killed 5 August 1917, aged 25 years. He was the son of Michael and Maria Tighe, of 39, Lyndhurst Rd., Burnley, who also lost another son, James Tighe in the war.
James, 155926, a Lance Corporal, was also with the 170th Tunnellers. His death had occurred less than two weeks earlier on 25 July 1917. He was 22 years old.
The brothers are buried in two different cemeteries, both places that come up frequently in Hughie's diary, Noeux-les-Mines and Bethune.
April 17
Fritz has started to shell Noeux-les-Mines again today, he's always at
this game now. Gibson has been shifted off my job and sent to Bethune
on motorcycle.
A really tragic story within a story which is even sadder on discovering more. Maria, from Ireland, was only 17 when she married Michael Tighe, also Irish. By 1911 only nine of their 13 children (all born in Lancashire, England), were still living, Maria was still only 40 years old. John & James were the eldest sons. There were three younger brothers Patrick, Daniel, Michael, and Joseph. The younger two were still under the age of ten when the war began in 1914. Patrick was about 16 and hopefully never enlisted.
(Courtesy of Jim Blackburn)
