| Description | Work completed by volunteer includes the following information:
Charles Smith served in the 7th Battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment from 1915 to 1919, he arrived in France on 13 Jul 1915. His Battalion spent 1915 and spring of 1916 in Belgium before preparing for the Somme offensive. According to the Beverley Guardian of 16 Sep 1916, he received an unspecified wound; the Battalion War Diary reported German shelling on this day of the trenches at Hebuterne with casualties being suffered. The 7th Battalion later served in Belgium in 1917 and France in 1918. He was awarded the 1914-15 Star and the War and Victory Medals.
Charles was born the 7 Aug 1895 the son of George and Ada Smith of West Hull. George was a fisherman who on the night of 22-23 Oct 1904 was killed in the Dogger Bank incident: in the North Sea a Russian naval fleet on route from the Baltic to the Far East to fight Japan mistook Hull trawlers for Japanese torpedo boats and opened fire, badly damaging the boats and killing three fishermen. George and the other two victims are commemorated on the Fisherman’s Memorial, Hessle Road, Hull and their funeral procession passed through the city centre.
In 1911 Charles was lodging at 49 Flemingate, Beverley and was an apprentice shipwright. His mother died in Beverley in 1912. In 1939 Charles was working as a general labourer-Ships Repairing Heavy Worker (sic), living at 38 Fountain Street, Hull.
Includes photograph, information taken from census, military records, Commonwealth War Graves, newspapers |