Bob Carlyle was a New Zealander who played soccer for the Toowoomba club Cities in 1915. His play was noted by the Toowoomba Chronicle on 4 June when it wrote, “the Cities forced a corner, from which Carlyle, with a beautiful centre kick, enabled Freeman to ‘head in’”.
Carlyle was one of six newly enlisted Cities players farewelled by the club at the Grand Hotel in August 1915. The Chronicle gave Carlyle their own tribute on 2 August after his enlistment.
Among the volunteers who were accepted on Saturday is included Mr. R. A. Carlyle. My Carlyle is connected with the New Zealand Insurance Company, and though only here a little over a year he has made a host of friends. There is no doubt that ‘Bob’ will help to maintain the name that the Australians have already made in Gallipoli.
Carlyle was attached to the 2nd Light Horse Field Ambulance and spent his war in Egypt. He worked in the unit’s Immobile Section, the receiving station behind the lines where injured soldiers were first evacuated.
After recovering from illness in early 1918, Carlyle was transferred for duty to the No. 2 Australian Stationary Hospital in Port Said and Moascar. In August he was transferred again to the medical section of the A.I.F. Headquarters in Cairo. He remained in Egypt into 1919, before starting back to Australia in August.
A letter written by Carlyle in 1944 revealed he returned to New Zealand after arriving back in Australia. He wrote the letter asking about whether he was eligible for a war gratuity which he had recently been told should have been paid to him on his discharge. He explained his return to New Zealand was the probable reason he had not heard about the gratuity at the time.
Carlyle married Euphemia Mitchell in New Zealand in 1922. By 1937 they had divorced, and he was living in Mosman, New South Wales, where he married Gladys Barker.
Carlyle died in Sydney in 1956. He was still working in insurance at the time of his death.