William C. Tait

AMERICAN BATTLE MONUMENTS COMMISSION

Tech Sgt., U.S. Army
Serial: 06519183
Unit: 6th Ordnance Bomb Disposal Squad
Entered the Service from: New Jersey
Died: July 9, 1944
Buried in Plot F1186B, Beverly National Cemetery, Beverly, New Jersey
Awards: Purple Heart

Technical Sergeant William C. Tait was born in Scotland on August 27, 1919, to Joseph and Elizabeth Tait. His father had come to America in 1923, and young William and his mother came over the following year. By 1930 a brother, Joseph, had been born; the family was renting a home on the corner of Evergreen and Magnolia Avenues in Somerdale, N.J., and the elder Tait was working as a timekeeper in a department store.

William Tait graduated from Haddon Heights High School in 1937. He had run track, and participated in the Penn Relays in Philadelphia, Pa. He worked for a time at the R.M. Hollingshead Corporation plant in Camden, N.J. He enlisted into the United States Army some time prior to July, 1940. Assigned to a bomb disposal unit, he died on July 9, 1944, in Normandy, when a mine he was attempting to defuse exploded, killing him.

William C. Tait is memorialized along with eleven of his co-workers on a monument that now is situated at Newton Lake Park in Haddon Township, N.J. To visit the web page for this monument, click here. He is also remembered in a newspaper article that can be read by clicking here.

The Raws-Tait VFW Post #7334, Kennedy Boulevard and Somerdale Road, is named in part for William C. Tait.

William C. Tait was one of six members of Haddon Heights High School’s class of 1937 to lose their lives while serving in the United States armed forces during World War II, the others being Edgar Crouthamel, Oscar Kline, William Raws, Warren Stafford Jr., and Oliver F. Starr Jr.. Another member of the Class of 1939, Carlton R. Rouh, was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.