On this day in 1917, Frederick George Charley (1895-1917) was killed in a battle in a hilltop village near Jerusalem.
Frederick, 22, a sergeant in the 16th Devons, was among more than 80 officers and other ranks who lost their lives in fierce fighting at Beit ur al-Foka.
Frank Roberts – one of 30 grandsons of my great-great grandfather John Roberts to fight in the war – had a miraculous escape from death in the same battle.
He was shot in the head and survived a 300-mile journey by camel to a hospital in Cairo to have the bullet removed.
A cousin of Frank’s, Private Thomas ‘Tom’ Johns, a signaller in the 16th Devons, was killed in the battle.
Frederick – whose great nephew married Frank’s granddaughter, Valerie Bucknell – went to war on December 31, 1915.
He served in the Royal North Devon Hussars (RNDH) who became part of the 16th Devons in December 1916.
Frederick’s death was reported in The North Devon Journal on December 27, 1917.
He was also mentioned in the newspaper’s 1917 Roll of Honour on January 17, 1918.
Frederick married two years before his death.
A special booklet produced for his memorial service in Kentisbury included the following words from his young widow, Caroline:
‘Could I have only smoothed the hair from off his fair young brow, my heart, I think, would not have bled as it is bleeding now.’
Frederick was buried at Jerusalem War Cemetery. He is also remembered on Kentisbury War Memorial and on the Roll of Honour in St Thomas’s Church, Kentisbury.
Paul Roberts
NOTES
Maurice Pile – the grandson of Frederick’s brother, John Turner Charley (1893- 1974) – married Valerie Bucknell in 1970.
Born in 1895 in Kentisbury, Frederick was the son of John Charley (1849-1921) and Mary Jane Lerwill (1859-1951). His father farmed at Cowley, Kentisbury for many years – and Frederick lived and worked there as a farm labourer before he went to war. He married Caroline Amelia Hill Smallridge (1893-1984) in 1915.
Picture below
Frederick George Charley.
