| Description | Work completed by volunteer includes the following information:
Gunner Charles Stephenson, aged 20, and from Hornsea was severely wounded in action in France on 22 Apr 1917. He was taken to a military hospital in Camiers but died of his wounds on 6 May 1917. He is buried at the nearby Etaples Military Cemetery. He was awarded the War and Victory Medals.
Charles was a gunner in “A” Battery of the 223rd Brigade of the Royal Field Artillery. He enlisted in May 1915 and was with the RFA Territorial Force before switching to the regular army. He had arrived in France in Apr-May 1916 and would have taken part in the Battle of the Somme. The 22 Apr 1917 was the day before the start of the Second Battle of the Scarpe and he may have been involved in the preliminary British bombardment of heavily fortified German trenches along the Hindenburg Line east of the city of Arras when he was injured.
Charles Waudby Stephenson was born in Hornsea in Jan 1897 and baptised at the parish church the 31 Jan 1897, the son of Joseph Samuel Stephenson, a builder originally from Cherry Burton and Ada R (nee Waudby) of Hull. The family lived in Rise Terrace, Hornsea. Charles worked as a draper’s assistant at H.Stephenson’s drapery business in Newbegin in Hornsea. Charles was unmarried.
Charles is remembered on the War Memorial in Hornsea and on the East Riding Memorial in Beverley Minster. According to the Hull Daily Mail of 2 Jun 1917 that announced Charles’ death, it also notes that his brothers Arthur and Joseph were serving in the army in France.
Includes photograph, information taken from census, military records, Commonwealth War Graves, newspapers |