Private John Tancred

Street: Tancred Grove
Rank: Private
Service Number: 13011512
Age: 43
Date of Death: 5 December 1943
Operation: Battle of Monte Camino (Monte Cassino), Italy
Unit: 187 Company, Pioneer Corps
Role: Stretcher Bearer
Family: Son of Joseph and Mary Tancred of Droylsden, Lancashire; nephew of Mrs. E. A. Smith
Burial: Minturno War Cemetery, Italy (Grave I, F, 9)
Headstone Inscription: “A TOKEN OF LOVE AND REMEMBRANCE. A LOSS NO VICTORY CAN REPLACE.”

About Private Tancred

Private Tancred died of exhaustion after carrying a wounded officer for 16 hours through dangerous mountain terrain during the Battle of Monte Camino.

Full Biography

In Memory of: 13011512 Private JOHN TANCRED, 187 Coy, Pioneer Corps, who died age 43 on 05 December 1943. Son of Joseph and Mary Tancred of Droylsden, Lancashire.

Pioneer Private’s Gallantry at Monte Camino in 1943:

187 Company Pioneer Corps were on the Fifth Army front at the Battle of Monte Camino in Italy in December 1943. This Company provided stretcher bearers for positions well forward of Monastery Hill, bringing down from high mountain ledges the men too grievously wounded to make their own way on foot. “During the battle,” an Observer Officer recorded, “they worked for 72 hours without sleep or rest until towards the end they worked like robots, their limbs moving only from an unbreakable sense of duty. They were all on the wrong side of thirty.”

One of these men was 42-year-old Private Tancred of Ardwick, Manchester. On the night of 4 December 1943, he set off on the downward journey from the battle area carrying a severely wounded officer. The journey through the hills was dangerous; it was bitterly cold, and the going in a day of continuous rain was treacherous. The details of that night and the following day will never be known, but 16 hours later he stumbled into an Advanced Dressing Station, handed over the officer, and collapsed and died.

The War History of the Royal Pioneer Corps 1939-1945 recalls that Major GR Vivian, Commanding 187 Company, wrote at the end of his report, “I sincerely hope he will be remembered for this gallant act.” The War History adds: “It is no reflection on anyone that Private Tancred was not awarded any specific honour for courage was common currency on Monastery Hill and he would have been the last man to wish for any preferential treatment over the infantrymen who endured so much more in greater danger. He was not killed in action nor did he die of wounds. The nature of his death was inescapable — ‘Natural causes – exhaustion’. It is hoped, however, that this man so representative in the middle age and steadfastness of the British element of the Corps will become the greater remembrance of Pioneers everywhere and for all time.”

Private John Tancred

About Private Tancred

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