Charles Walter Turner

Family

Charles Walter Turner was born in 1897 in Dartmouth. He was the youngest surviving son of William Henry Stephens Turner and his wife, Rosa Ann Kelland, both born in Dartmouth.

William Turner was baptised at St Saviour's, Dartmouth on 29^th June 1860. His father, Thomas Turner, was a shipwright. He died in 1862 when William was only two years old, leaving William's mother Elizabeth Harriet (nee Stephens) with two very young children - William's sister, Blanche Louisa, was born only a couple of months before Thomas died. Elizabeth Turner remarried in 1864. Her second husband, John Carley, was a seaman in the Royal Navy, who then transferred to the Coastguard Service. By the time of the 1871 Census, John was stationed at Eastbourne, living in the Coastguard Cottages with Elizabeth and Blanche. William, in the meantime, was living in Horn Lane, Dartmouth with his grandmother, Harriet Stephens, and her second husband, Henry Veale, a builder and mason. Most probably for this reason, William became a mason too.

Rosa Ann Kelland was baptised at St Petrox, Dartmouth, a few months earlier than her future husband, on 28^th September 1859. Her parents, Robert and Susan Elizabeth Kelland, took three of their children to St Petrox to be christened on that day - Mary Moore, born 30^th May 1854, Francis Arthur, born 2^nd March 1857, and Rosa, born two weeks before the ceremony, on 12^th September 1859. Rosa was the seventh child born to Robert and Susan; the baptism register at St Petrox also records two more. In most of those records, Robert Kelland was described as a shoemaker; however, he also seems to have developed a second career, for at the time of the baptism of his son Alfred Edward, on 26^th April 1863, he was the "Master of the steamer Dart". In the 1871 Census, Robert and Susan lived in Coles Court. Still living home were Francis, apprenticed to a painter, and the three youngest children, Rosa, Alfred, and Caroline, all "scholars". Robert was a "Master of River Steamboat".

William and Rosa married on 2^nd February 1879 at the Baptist Meeting House in Atkins Lane, South Town, Dartmouth. They were both only eighteen years old. Their eldest son was born shortly afterwards, on 12^th April 1879, and baptised at St Petrox on 11^th May 1879. He was named William John Carley Turner, apparently partly for William himself and partly for his stepfather. John Carley retired from the Coastguard Service later that year, and he and Harriet (with William's sister Blanche) returned to Devon to run the Sportsman's Arms, at Hemborough Post, near Blackawton.

Where William and Rose began married life is not clear. They may have lived with Robert and Susan Kelland in Coles Court - Rosa and William junior were recorded there in the 1881 Census. We have been unable to trace William's whereabouts in that Census, so perhaps he was working away from home. Rosa and William's eldest daughter, Harriet Blanche, was born in Dartmouth just after the Census, on 28^th April 1881, but baptised on 10^th July 1881 at St John's, Paignton, suggesting that, after the second baby was born, the family may have moved away from Dartmouth for a brief period.

By the time of the birth of their third child, Francis Arthur Kelland, named for Rosa's brother, William and Rosa had moved back to Dartmouth. Francis was born on 16^th May 1883 and baptised at St Saviours on 14^th June of that year. He was followed swiftly by Robert Henry, born 26^th August 1884, baptised at St Saviours on 19^th October; by Rosa Ann, born 16^th February 1887 and baptised at St Saviours on 17^th April; and Harry, born 8^th October 1889, and baptised at St Saviours on 29^th January 1890. The 1891 Census recorded William, Rosa, and their six children living in Crowthers Hill. William continued to work in the building trade as a mason.

Over the next ten years, the baptism registers of St Saviours continued to record William and Rosa's growing family: George Demarche (Demarche was Rosa's mother's maiden name), on 18^th August 1892; Freda Louise, on 27^th September 1894; Alfred Edward and Charles Walter, baptised together on 15^th July 1897 (Alfred Edward was eighteen months old, and Charles Walter a newborn); and Margaret Stanning, on 3^rd March 1899. Sadly Margaret died later that year - she was buried at Longcross Cemetery on 4^th October 1899, aged seven months. She had been named for Rosa's father's second wife; Rosa's mother, Susan, had died in 1886, and her father Robert had married Margaret Stanning Coaker in 1888. Robert himself died soon after little Margaret, on 18^th December 1899. William had also lost his mother, Harriet Carley, at the beginning of 1899 (she had been widowed for a second time in 1890).

Meanwhile, the older members of the family were beginning their working lives. All the boys who survived to adulthood, except for Charles Walter, joined the Royal Navy sooner or later. William (junior) was the first - he joined HMS Britannia (still at that stage in the old training ships in the Dart) on 26^th June 1896 as a Domestic 3^rd Class, becoming a Sick Bay Attendant in 1899. During the early part of his career, he mostly alternated between HMS Britannia and Plymouth Hospital, so he probably returned home frequently. Francis followed his elder brother into the Navy three years later, joining HMS Impregnable on 24^th July 1899 as a Boy 2^nd Class; and Robert Henry joined only a few months later, joining HMS Impregnable as a Boy 2^nd Class on 2^nd January 1900.

At the 1901 Census, William and Rosa were still living in Crowthers Hill, and William continued to work as a mason. The three eldest boys were all away in the Navy, and Harriet Blanche was also not at home (we have not been able to trace her whereabouts in the Census). So there were still six children at home: Rosa (junior), Harry, George, Freda, Alfred, and Charles. Charles' position as the baby of the family was about to change, however - William and Rosa's last child, Albert Edward, was born only a few weeks after the Census was taken, on 20^th May 1901.

Over the next few years, as Charles grew up, his family continued to change gradually. Harriet Blanche married George Heard, a sailor, at St Petrox in 1902, and moved to Tollesbury, Essex. Harry was the next to join his brothers in the Navy, joining HMS Impregnable on 10^th September 1905 as a Boy 2^nd Class. Baby Albert, who was perhaps always frail, was privately baptised on 16^th July 1906, and buried four days later at Longcross, aged five. By this time, William and Rosa had moved to 2, South Ford Road.

The death of William and Rosa's youngest son was followed only six months later by the death of their eldest, William John. He had been promoted 2^nd Class Sick Bay Steward on 19^th January 1904, but he himself fell sick during his service in HMS Cornwallis in 1906. He was invalided out of the Navy on 25^th January 1907 and died on 11^th February at South Ford Road, aged 27. He too was buried at Longcross. William and Rosa felt this loss deeply, marking the anniversary of his death in the Dartmouth Chronicle for several years.

More happily, Rosa Ann married Henry John Hibbs in St Saviours on 23^rd June 1907. Her brothers Francis and Robert were the two witnesses. Henry Hibbs was a drayman at Warfleet Brewery, and he and Rosa remained in Warfleet after their marriage. By 1911, they had two boys, named after four of her brothers (as well as her husband) - Henry William Robert, and George Francis. Rosa and Henry remained in Dartmouth until after the war.

Robert's time in the Navy came to a premature end on 3^rd November 1909, when he was invalided out with tuberculosis. He was able to obtain work, however - when he married Maria Wallace in Strete in 1913, he was working as a Chauffeur in Haslemere, Surrey. Meantime, following the now-established path for the boys of the family, George had joined the Royal Naval College as an Officer's Clerk 3^rd Class in 1908, rejoining on a new continuous service engagement as a Stoker II on 29^th March 1910.

The 1911 Census recorded William, Rosa, and three of their children at 2, South Ford Road, Dartmouth. William now described himself as "bricklayer [working in] building industry". George was (apparently) home on leave from the Naval Base at Devonport (in which he was serving at the time); Alfred had not yet joined the Navy, but, aged 15, was working at the Royal Naval College as a "page boy"; and Charles had also begun his working life, as a Printer's errand boy. Freda Louise (recorded as Louise) was in domestic service not far away - she was a housemaid in the household of Brantford Hartland, the Headmaster of Paignton College, and his wife and family.

A few months later, Alfred took the same route into the service as his brother George, joining the Navy as an Officer's Clerk 3^rd Class on 23^rd September 1911. However, he did not serve for long, being discharged sick on 2^nd April 1913. He died two months later, and was buried at Longcross on 19^th July 1913. By this time, Harry had also left the Navy, being invalided out with kidney disease in 1912. By the time the war began, William and Rosa had two sons in the Navy: Francis was serving in the battleship HMS Collingwood, and George was appointed to the battlecruiser HMS Tiger as she was commissioned, on 3^rd October 1914. Both served in these ships throughout the war.

Service

Whether Charles tried to join the Navy after the war began is not known, but he must have been keen to "do his bit", because his name appeared in the Dartmouth Chronicle's weekly "Roll of Honour" of those serving in HM Forces on 18^th and 25^th December 1914. By that date, he had joined the Devonshire Regiment and had been posted to the 10^th (Service) Battalion. Exactly when he joined up is not known, because his papers have not survived - at the time of his death it was said that he "enlisted immediately after the outbreak of war". However, some indication may be obtained by looking at the surviving papers of those men joining the Devonshire Regiment with service numbers very close to his (14509). These suggest that he may have joined around the middle of November 1914.

At this stage, the minimum age for enlistment into the Regular army was eighteen, whilst overseas service was not permitted until the age of nineteen (subject to certain dispensations for those in Boy Service or with specific technical abilities in the Royal Engineers). Charles was a few months over seventeen, so it is highly likely he overstated his age by a few more months, or that the recruiting sergeant turned a blind eye.

The 10^th (Service) Battalion was formed as part of "K3", the "Third New Army" formed by Lord Kitchener, authorised in September 1914. The battalion was allocated to the 26^th Division, which began to form at Stockton Camp, west of Salisbury. According to C T Atkinson:

The 10^th Battalion was ordered overseas to France in September 1915, the main body of the battalion crossing from Folkestone to Boulogne on 23^rd September, and arriving with the rest of the brigade near Amiens on 25^th September, as the 8^th and 9^th Battalions (which included many men from Dartmouth) attacked at the Battle of Loos. The 10^th spent most of October in training, but just as they had reached Sailly-Laurette, to be attached to the 1^st Devons for instruction in trench warfare, they received orders to "about turn", and prepare for embarkation at Marseilles. They had been ordered to go to Salonika.

When they arrived in Marseilles on 13^th November, they:

Salonika

The background to the 10^th Battalion's sudden redeployment was the developing threat that Bulgaria would ally with Germany and Austria to attack Serbia. To prevent this, the Allies formed the Salonika Expeditionary Force. Notwithstanding official Greek neutrality (and profiting from divisions between King Constantine, who favoured the Central Powers, and his Prime Minister Eleutherios Venizelos, who favoured the Allies), the Greek port of Salonika was used as the base for the launch of the campaign. One French and one British division were sent to begin with, but, according to Peter Hart, by the time they arrived:

The 26^th Division was one of five British divisions sent to the area, while the French eventually had nine serving there; other countries also contributed forces, but:

For the 10^th Battalion, the first part of 1916 was a period of very little action. They were put first to making roads, to enable proper supply lines to be established to the front line, and then to trench construction. In June, according to Atkinson, they:

On 30^th July, however, they were brought back up to the front line, and on 22^nd August, were involved in repelling a Bulgarian attack. They remained in the same area for the next few weeks. However, the principal cause of casualties at this period was not the Bulgarians, but the conditions. In August and September 1916, many men were hospitalised by malaria and dysentery, and numbers fell much below strength. It seems that Charles was one of those badly affected; the short piece published about him in the Dartmouth Chronicle in December 1917 (see below) reported that "he was home on leave last summer after having suffered malaria, dysentery and typhoid in Salonika".

How long Charles was at home is not known, but he did not return to Salonika, instead being sent to France to join the 9^th Devons. He may well have been delighted to leave Macedonia, but what he faced in Flanders was far worse.

France and Flanders

The 8^th and 9^th Devons were both part of the Seventh Division, having arrived in France in 1915. For the 9^th Devons experiences to April 1917, see the stories of Robert Phillips Willing, Ernest Leonard Memory, Thomas Alfred Smith and Samuel Courtman. After the attack on Ecoust, they had been involved in an attack on Bullecourt on 7^th/8^th May, followed by a period of comparative quiet in the front line, and an extended period of training in August.

The 8^th and 9^th Devons were moved up to Flanders on 29^th August 1917, where the Third Battle of Ypres had started nearly a month earlier. (For the background to this offensive, see the story of William John Farrow Bates, killed on the first day of the battle on 31^st July 1917). Throughout September, however, they remained well to the rear, continuing to train and absorb drafts of reinforcements. They were brought forward on 29^th September to take part in the renewed offensive. On 4^th October, the Seventh Division took part in the Battle of Broodseinde - see the story of John Samuel Webber, killed on 7^th October while the 8^th Devons held the position they had gained in the attack.

On the day of that attack, the 9^th Devons were in reserve, and spent most of 4^th and 5^th October finding carrying parties and bringing down wounded. They were brought into the line on 6^th October and remained there for four days. The positions they held were heavily shelled on 10^th October, and by the time they were relieved that evening they had lost nearly as heavily as the 8^th Devons, who had led the attack.

The Devons were next brought into the continuing battle on 26^th October, the start of what is now called the Second Battle of Passchendaele, the final phase of the Third Battle of Ypres. The attack on the Passchendaele Ridge itself was the responsibility of the Canadian Corps; it fell to the British Fifth and Seventh Divisions to mount a "diversionary" attack to the south, intended to pin down German reserves and prevent them being redeployed against the main offensive. The Seventh Division's objective was the village of Gheluvelt, on the Menin Road.

The conditions were appalling, for it had rained heavily during most of October, once again turning the battlefield into a morass, and both the 8^th and 9^th Devons were well below strength because of the casualties earlier in the month. The fortnight's "rest" had offered little real respite - due to the conditions, "training was difficult, recreation barely possible, real rest unattainable, as the camps were within reach of the German long-range guns, and their aeroplanes had now developed night bombing of British camps into a regular system".

Across the Seventh Division's front, the 91^st Brigade was on the right, south of the Menin Road, and the 20^th Brigade was positioned either side of the road. Within the Brigade front, the Borders were on the right (with the Gordons in support) and the Devons were on the left, immediately to the north of the road. This time, the 9^th Devons led the attack, with the 8^th Devons in support. The 9^th Devons objective was the "Red Line", which ran through the middle of the village approximately south-west to north-east, just east of Gheluvelt church. If they achieved this, the 8^th Devons were to "leap-frog" over them to a "Blue Line", in effect taking the whole of the rest of the village. They faced, as elsewhere, a series of strongly fortified and held pillboxes and consolidated shell-holes.

Zero-hour was 5.40am, and despite enemy shelling of the support areas, the attack went in on time. However, the Borders on the right immediately met stiff resistance, and were unable to keep up with the Devons. A pillbox known as "Lewis House", south of the road, caused many casualties to the right-hand company of the 9^th Devons through enfilade fire, so that the right of the attack fell behind the left. But some, under Captain Pridham of the 9^th Devons, were able to consolidate a position just short of the light railway west of the village, though this was not far beyond their starting point. The left-hand company was able to get further, and some men even reached the village, taking a few prisoners.

By this time, the 8^th Devons, "leap-frogging" through, had overtaken the 9^th, though sustaining many casualties from the enfilade fire. Men from both battalions were "inextricably mixed up" as the attack went further forward and casualties mounted. Some reached a position a little north of Gheluvelt Church, but this proved untenable when an enemy counter-attack was mounted down the light railway line, which ran behind them, and risked cutting them off. The survivors, under Captain Marshall of the 8^th Devons, therefore fell back to a "huge shell-crater" outside the village, near, or on, the Menin Road.

Meanwhile, platoons attacking further to the left lost their direction, swinging into the neighbouring Fifth Division's area; one party attempted to attack Gheluvelt Chateau, to the north-east of the village, but was then isolated and came under heavy fire, sustaining many casualties as they withdrew. Others attacking on the right swung across the road in an attempt to rush the enfilading pillboxes, but all were hit. One platoon on the right was seen to reach Gheuvelt, but no survivors ever came back.

Eventually, only Captain Marshall's and Captain Pridham's parties were left, together with a few isolated groups of men in twos and threes in shell-holes. Very few weapons were not clogged with mud and Lewis and Vickers machine guns were out of action. It began to look as if both battalions might be entirely lost.

However, two companies of reinforcements from the Royal Welsh Fusiliers were sent up, and got through despite the impossible conditions; and the Gordons were able to take one of the pillboxes on the right of Captain Marshall's crater, which then enabled a defensive flank to be formed south of the road. At 3pm the judgment was made that anyone in front of the line to which the survivors had fallen back was likely to be dead or a prisoner, and a protective barrage was then put down to deter any possible enemy attack aiming to take advantage of the situation. No such attack was forthcoming, and what was left of the 20^th Brigade was relieved at 8pm.

Death

In the 9^th Devons, Captain Pridham was the only company officer unhit. Six officers were killed or missing. Of the men, 143 were killed or missing, 151 wounded.

In the 8^th Devons, fourteen officers were killed, wounded or missing, with 127 men killed or missing (about 40 of whom were subsequently reported prisoners of war) and 131 wounded.

The Regimental History observes:

C T Atkinson, writing fairly soon after the events he describes, tried with real feeling to find something positive to say:

Charles Turner was one of those whose fate was unknown after the attack. Perhaps because several men had been taken prisoner, his name did not appear in casualty lists for some time. He was eventually declared "missing" in the casualty list of 10^th December 1917. The Dartmouth Chronicle duly reported on 14^th December 1917:

Charles' body was never found (or if found, was not identified), and he was later presumed to have died on or since 26^th October 1917. Charles' father William died six months later, on 27^th April 1918, aged 57, with his youngest son's fate still unknown.

Commemoration

As one of 35,000 men of British and New Zealand forces who died on the Ypres front between August 1917 and November 1918, Charles is commemorated on the Tyne Cot Memorial Wall to the Missing, which surrounds the Tyne Cot Cemetery.

Both Charles' brothers still serving in the Royal Navy saw action (including at the Battle of Jutland) and both survived the war.

Sources

The Devonshire Regiment 1914-1918, compiled by C T Atkinson, publ. 1926, London and Exeter

The Bloody Eleventh: History of the Devonshire Regiment, volume III 1914-1969, by W J P Aggett, publ. Devonshire and Dorset Regiment, Exeter, 1995

The Great War 1914-1918, by Peter Hart, publ. 2014, Profile Books

Naval Service Records for Charles' brothers available at the National Archives, fee payable for download, references:

• William Turner: ADM 188/536/354833
• Francis Arthur Kelland Turner: ADM 188/357/205164
• Robert Henry Turner: ADM 188/362/207643
• Harry Turner: ADM 188/416/234698
• George Demarch[e] Turner: ADM 188/988/406 and ADM 188/879/6166
• Alfred Edward Turner: ADM 188/994/3134

Note:

It has been suggested elsewhere that Charles Walter Turner and Harry Cresswell Turner (also on the Dartmouth War Memorial) were brothers. It is clear from our research that this is incorrect. (However, Harry Cresswell Turner and Cecil Hall Turner were brothers - see their stories, already published).

Information Held on Database

Surname:	Turner
Forenames:	Charles Walter
Rank:	Private
Service Number:	14509
Military Unit:	9th Bn Devonshire Regiment
Date of Death:	26 Oct 1917
Age at Death:	20
Cause of Death:	Killed in action
Action Resulting in Death:	Third Battle of Ypres
Place of Death:	Gheluvelt, Belgium
Place of Burial:	Commemorated Tyne Cot Memorial, Belgium
Born or Lived in Dartmouth?	Yes
On Dartmouth War Memorial?	Yes
On St Saviour's Memorials?	Yes
On St Petrox Memorials?	No
On Flavel Church Memorials?	No
In Longcross Cemetery?	No
In St Clement's Churchyard?	No
On a Private Memorial?	No
On Another Memorial?	No

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