Pte 88135 Frederick John Tall

• Age: 19
• From: London
• Regiment: The King's (Liverpool Regiment) 18th Btn
• K.I.A Tuesday 9th April 1918
• Commemorated at: Cement House Cem, Langemarck
  Panel Ref: X.D.29

This soldier’s age does not match the age on his CWGC headstone, provided by his stepmother.  

The birth registration shows he was born in Battersea in the March quarter of 1898, making him 20 years old when he was killed.  He was baptised on 23rd January 1898 in St. Stephen’s, Battersea, his parents’ residence given as 38 Surrey Lane, and his father’s occupation as attendant, Royal Courts of Justice. 

Frederick John Tall was the son of John Henry Tall and his wife Laura (née Jewell), who married in St. Mary’s, Chelsea, in 1893 when they were both 31. His father was born in Ely, Cambridgeshire, and his mother in London. Fred had an older sister Ernestine Violet, born in 1895.  

Sadly, his mother Laura died in late 1899, aged 37, when Fred was one year old.  

His father remarried in January 1901 to Agnes Buckle, born in Abingdon, Berkshire. No records of children born to the marriage have been found.

The 1901 census finds his father and stepmother, with his sister Ernestine, 5, at 3 Octavia Street, Battersea. His father, 38, is employed as an attendant at the Royal Courts of Justice, Agnes is 32.  At the same address are Frederick and Frances Wooley and family.  It is not known whether Fred was inadvertently omitted from the census, but he has not been found in any other household or institution.

His father died aged 42 in Battersea in 1905, leaving Fred an orphan at the age of seven.

In 1911 Fred John Tall is found as an inmate in King Edward’s School for Boys, near Godalming, Surrey. Fred is one of 232 boys housed in 32 rooms.  Founded in 1553 by King Edward VI, the school is located in a pastoral setting in the village of Wormley.  As well as classroom lessons in reading, writing, arithmetic, history and geography, the boys were given 'industrial training' to prepare them for employment, learning trades such as carpentry and shoemaking.  Unfortunately, Fred is not listed on the school WW1 memorial.

His (step)mother Agnes is a lady’s maid, one of three servants employed in Crosby House, 3 Fair Mile, Henley on Thames.  His sister Ernestine, 15, is a servant/dressmaker’s apprentice in the Elderfield household at The Bridge, Abingdon, Berkshire.  

Fred lost his only sibling when Ernestine died In 1913 aged 17, in Hampshire.

The amount of the War Gratuity suggests that he enlisted soon after war broke out, when he would have been only 16 years old. SDGW shows that he enlisted as #10724 18th Hussars, but the medal roll shows 4th Lancs. Hus. Yeo.  However, no such battalion/regiment can be found. Only two other individuals are found on a medal roll in the 4th Lancs. Hus., and both appear to be errors; they were in fact in the Lancashire Fusiliers.  His Medal Index Card shows 1st Lancashire Hussars.  No 1914-1915 Star has been found, suggesting that Fred was not sent to France until 1916 at the earliest, or perhaps when he turned 19 in early 1917.

In July 1917, the regiment was dismounted and dispatched for training as infantry. This was completed in September 1917, when 16 officers and 290 men were absorbed into the 18th Bn K.L.R., then in the Ypres Salient,  becoming the 18th (Lancashire Hussars) Battalion, The King’s (Liverpool Regiment).  For the rest of the year the Pals battalions were in and out of the line, until the Third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele) ended in November. 

In January 1918 the 18th entrains for the south and by the end of the month are in position near St. Quentin. Fred survives the German Spring Offensive, in which British forces are forced to retreat before the German onslaught.  In early April the Pals survivors, with stragglers and new drafts, entrain again for the Ypres Salient, and move into the front line near Hazebrouck and Bailleul on 7th April.

On 9th April the Germans attack along a front from Béthune to Ypres. The Battle of the Lys was part of the German Spring Offensive in Flanders.  The German plan was to break through the First Army, push the Second Army aside to the north, and drive west to the English Channel, cutting off British forces in France from their supply line which ran through the Channel ports of Calais, Dunkirk, and Boulogne. 

Fred was killed in action during the attack. He was buried close to where he fell, and his grave marked by a cross.

The Battalion diary gives an insight into the events of the day:

3am Enemy shelled forward post with Trench Mortars and sector generally with Field Guns for about an hour.

Wire put out during the night 8^th/9^th round posts. Visibility bad during the day and little activity.  

After the war, when graves were concentrated, his body was removed and reinterred in Cement House Cemetery, Langemarck, Flanders where he now rests. His headstone bears the epitaph:

“PEACE PERFECT PEACE”

Langemark has given its name to the Battles of 21-24 October 1914 and 16-18 August 1917. The village was in German hands from April 1915 to August 1917 and from April to September 1918. Commonwealth, French and Belgian forces have in turn defended and attacked it. "Cement House" was the military name given to a fortified farm building on the Langemark-Boesinghe (now Boezinge) road. The original Cement House Cemetery (now Plot I, an irregular group of 231 graves) was begun here at the end of August 1917 and used by the 4th and 17th Division burial officers, by field ambulances and by units in the line until April 1918. In the years immediately following the Armistice, most of Plots II - XV were added when Commonwealth graves were brought in from the battlefields and small burial grounds around Langemark and Poelkapelle, mostly dating from the Autumn of 1917. The more important graveyards or groups of graves concentrated into this cemetery. The space vacated has been filled in over the intervening years by graves brought in from communal cemeteries and churchyards in the area, when their maintenance in these locations could no longer be assured. The cemetery is still used for the burial of remains that continue to be discovered in the vicinity, and a number of plots have been extended to accommodate these graves. There are now 3,592 Commonwealth servicemen of the First World War buried or commemorated in the cemetery, 2,425 of the burials are unidentified. Of the 22 Second World War burials in the cemetery, five are unidentified. The cemetery was designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield.

It appears that his medals were not sent or applied for. The Medal Roll (showing John Fred’k, as does the Medal Index Card) indicates that a request for authorisation for disposal of medals was made on 20th February 1922.

Similarly, his Soldiers’ Effects entry shows that his Army pay of £8-1s and the War Gratuity of £21-10s were “unissued”.

The pension card in the name of his “mother” Agnes (the only mother he had ever known) at Crosby House, Fair Mile, Henley shows that she was awarded a pension of 7/- a week from July 1918.  The card inexplicably gives the regimental number 300427 in addition to 88135; no records are found with this number. 

Fred is commemorated on the Henley on Thames Memorial Tablet (Town Hall).

We currently have no further information on Frederick John Tall, If you have or know someone who may be able to add to the history of this soldier, please contact us.