| Description | Work completed by volunteer includes the following information:
Private Charles Harrod enlisted on 4 Dec 1915 and arrived in France on 19 Nov 1916 as the Battle of the Somme was drawing to a close. He was in the so called “Beverley Terriers”, the 5th Battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment. He served in “D” Company. However he was soon diagnosed with trench foot and hospitalised at the 10th General Hospital in Rouen and his condition was sufficiently serious for him to be repatriated to hospital in Britain three days later on 10 Jan 1917. He didn’t return to France until the middle of Jun 1917 and presumably because of his medical condition was “compulsorily transferred” to the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) to serve in a Field Ambulance that took casualties from the battlefield to nearby Casualty Clearing Stations. In Nov 1917 he was moved to Italy with his unit and served in southern Italy at Taranto until he was discharged in Aug 1919. During this time he was hospitalised for a week with “phleb fever” (sic). He was awarded the War and Victory Medals.
Charles was born in Beverley in 1888 and worked as a tanner’s labourer alongside his father, Charles (senior) and his younger brother, Arthur, born in 1892 and killed in action on 19 Jul 1917. Charles (senior) was originally from Norfolk and married local girl, Fanny West in 1886. Charles (junior) came from a family of seven children and the family home in 1901 was in St Andrew Street, Beverley and later at Eastbourne Villa, Grovehill Road.
Charles was a churchgoer and was involved before and after the war in committee work at the United Methodist Church in Trinity Lane, now the Freemasons’ Hall. In November 1909 he had married Kate Hood of Beverley. They had three children Frank born 1910, Alice born 1911 and George born Dec 1913. However George died aged three in early 1917. Their home in 1911 was in Cherry Tree Lane but he later moved to his parents’ house in nearby Grovehill Road. Charles died in Beverley on 22 May 1921 .
Includes photograph, information taken from census, military records, Commonwealth War Graves, newspapers |