Charles Thomas Alexander Tyndall (1898 – 1960)

First World War Roll of Honour

Research during the WW1 commemoration project has suggested that Charles Thomas Alexander Tyndall survived the First World War and his name was included on the College’s memorial in error.

Charles Thomas Alexander Tyndall was born in 1898 and by 1907 was at school at Ashton Grammar School in Dunstable. He was awarded an exhibition at Downing in early 1917, but he was never admitted and his name was included in the recent additions to the War List in The Griffin in Michaelmas 1917. The only other reference to him in the Archive is in the printed War List for 1 Oct 1917-30 Sep 1918 (DCAR/1/14/2/1) which lists Tyndall with the Cadet Battalion at Gailes Camp, Ayrshire.

Very little information about Charles Tyndall’s subsequent service could be found during research for the WW1 Roll of Honour project in 2014-18, but his name was not included in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission database listing those who had lost their lives. Further research uncovered entries in The Times which suggested that Tyndall had actually joined the Indian Army in July 1917, serving throughout the rest of the war in the 2nd Battalion of the 5th Royal Gurkha Rifles. He appears to have continued in the Indian Army after the war, until at least 1922. This, perhaps, may explain why the College included him on the memorial, in the absence of any information about what may have happened to him after the war ended.

Charles Thomas Alexander Tyndall was married in Brisbane in 1925 and appears to have remained abroad with his family until 1950, when they returned from New Zealand. He died in the Cotswolds in 1960.