| Description | Work completed by volunteer includes the following information:
Charles Bentley was born in Jun 1878 and raised in Kilnwick by parents Richard and Maria (nee Ward). He was the youngest son of a large family. At age 13 he was employed as a farm servant working for Sarah Duggleby at Hornhill Top, Village Street, Kilnwick. By 1901 Charles had moved to Henry Timpson Hotham’s Glebe Farm at Bainton where he was a waggoner and 10 years later, in 1911 as a 32 year old single man, he was foreman for Sarah Walker at Decoy Farm, Scorborough.
Charles enlisted in Aug 1915 in Toronto, Canada with the 83rd Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force at the age of 37. Setting sail from Montreal on the “Corsican” on 25 Sep, he arrived back in England on 5 Oct 1915. In Jan 1916 Charles was transferred to 26th Battalion CEF who were already holding the line around Kemmel and St Eloi in Flanders and where they remained for the whole of the summer under heavy German fire and making their own counter attacks.
Charles’ photo appeared in the Beverley Guardian on 2 Sep 1916 with the caption of “4 Brothers at the Front”. They certainly shared the same paternal grandparents but Charles was actually cousin to the other three.
Within two weeks of this photograph being printed, Charles was killed in action during the Allied attack to capture the Somme village of Courcelette in Sep 1916. Initially Charles date of death was given as 15-17 Sep but was later amended to 17th and the Canadian “Circumstance of Death Register” records “This soldier was almost instantly killed by the explosion of an enemy shell.”
Charles’ Attestation Papers include his will where he asks that in the event of his death his belongings be equally divided between sisters Edith and Annie and brothers Robert and George. Charles is remembered with honour on the Vimy Memorial, Canada’s largest overseas National Memorial to commemorate more than 11,000 men of the Canadian Expeditionary Force who have no known grave.
Includes photograph, information taken from census, military records, Commonwealth War Graves, newspapers |