Service number: 5930 | Rank: Sergeant | Regiment: Suffolk Regiment
Killed in action, August 6, 1915, in Flanders. Aged 32.
Buried at GUNNERS FARM MILITARY CEMETERY, Comines-Warneton, Hainaut, Belgium.
Born and enlisted at Brandon.
WHAT I KNOW ABOUT CHARLES …
At the time of the 1911 Census Charles was living in Colchester with his wife Florence and two young children, and was working as a labourer on the Great Eastern Railway. By the start of the war he had returned back to Brandon and had followed his father, who was also named Charles, into employment at Mr Mount’s whiting pit along the Thetford Road. He enlisted for the war at Brandon and entered into Kitchener’s Army with the 7th Battalion of the Suffolk Regiment. He undertook extensive training near Aldershot in February 1915, and then a few months later in May he, and the rest of the 7th Suffolks, landed at Boulogne in France. While he was stationed at Nieppe, in northern France, he received extra instruction from veterans of the war before his unit formed up into working parties and entered a section of the front line at Ploegsteert Wood on 23rd June. Charles’ exact movements are currently unknown but he was killed on August 6th, 1915. His wife Florence, who was living at 46 Lisle Road, Colchester at the time, received the official notification of Charles’ death.
Charles’ parents had lost their eldest son, aged 32, which in itself must have been heart wrenching, but a year later they would also lose their second eldest son, Bertie, who would die in an enemy hospital.