Being  the Great War story of my maternal grandfather Charles Reuben – “Charlie” – Clements (CRC), a Private in the 24^th (2^nd Sportsmen’s) Battalion, the Royal Fusiliers (the City of London Regiment).

Before the Great War

Charles Reuben Clements  was born at  home in Hammersmith in Middlesex on January 12^th, 1896, the son of Charles Ernest Clements, a carman and contractor, and his wife  Jessie Clements, nee Percy, a part-time music teacher.    Home was 109 Yeldham Road, a small end-of-terrace Victorian house at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac off Fulham Palace Road, with a large yard attached, where it is believed that Charles Senior kept his horses and horse-drawn vehicles.  Charles Junior received his  education at Latymer School in Hammersmith.  However,  he was forced  to leave school early, aged seventeen, in 1913, after his father died suddenly, aged only forty-two, in order to enter the workplace – as an assistant in a gentlemen’s shop – to help provide an  income for his  family. 

At  this time, his  family consisted of him; his widowed mother, familiarly known to him as “Ma”; and his two younger sisters, Jessie Winifred (“Jess”), who had been born in 1901, and Lilian Edith (“Lily”), born in 1904.  His elder brother John Edwin, who had been born in 1893, had  died in 1894; and his younger brother, John Percy, who had been born in 1900, in 1901.  

CRC was evidently a conscientious man, with a strong work-ethic.  He never gambled, although he did “do the Pools”, which he considered to be a game of  skill rather than chance.  And, after an unfortunate early experience at  a friend’s coming-of-age party, he never drank.  He had a dry sense of humour.  When my mother wrote to inform him of my – premature – birth in 1958, he wrote back that he was “delighted of course to hear that Robert Wynn is progressing so well” and “flattered at first to hear he resembled myself but on reading  … that he was short of …  hair and putting on weight  am rather in doubt”.  In his free  time, he enjoyed a range of sporting pursuits.

The Great War

CRC voluntarily enlisted   in the 24^th (2^nd Sportsmen’s) Battalion, the Royal Fusiliers on May 30^th, 1915, and was given the regimental number 3526.  

It is evident from his  surviving “Medical History” (Army Form B178), in the National Archives, dated June 4^th, 1915, that he lied about his age when he volunteered, claiming to be twenty-two when he was actually only nineteen – possibly because he looked about sixteen.  Also, that he was only 5’6” tall, and only weighed 9st4lbs.

After enlistment, CRC  was sent to Hare Hall Camp in Romford in Essex, where the 24^th Battalion had just set up its base, for training.   He emerged from training as a Private soldier and 1^st Class Signaller.  As a Signaller, one of his responsibilities   on the battle-front would be to  relay  communications.  In the Great War, this was generally done by using field telephone networks, rather than by the hitherto conventional means of signalling with flags (using Semaphore), or with lamps or mirrors, or with a Heliograph (using Morse Code).  It  would  involve  the laying and constant  repairing  of miles of telephone cable in and around front-line trenches, often under fire.   And it would be dangerous work. In April, 1917, the then  Signals Officer for the 24^th Battalion, Second Lieutenant Cyril Francis Stafford,  would suffer a   mortal wound  while supervising the laying of telephone cables near Vimy Ridge  while under heavy shell-fire.  Private Frank Richards of the Royal Welch Fusiliers wrote, “Signallers who went into attacks with their companies had to muck in with the scrapping until the objective was taken and then if they were still on their feet were generally converted into runners [tasked with  delivering messages by hand].  A runner’s job was very dangerous: he might have to travel over ground from where the enemy had just been driven and which now was being heavily shelled.  In  shell holes here and there might be some of the enemy who had been missed by the mopping-up party or who had been shamming dead; they would pop up and start sniping at him.  I remember one show we were in … where extra runners had been detailed off for the day, losing fifteen out of twenty”. 

CRC went on to serve with the 24^th Battalion on the Western Front  for three years, fighting in the Battles of the Somme  in, 1916; in the Battles of Arras and  Cambrai in 1917; and in the First and Battles of the Somme, and  the Battle of Havrincourt, the first of the   Battles of the Hindenburg Line, in 1918.  At one point during the First Battles of the Somme, 1918, specifically on March 23^rd, 1918, he  would have been very close to where his future brother-in-law, my paternal grandfather, Able-Bodied Seaman Francis Wynn Jones (FWJ) of the Anson Battalion of 63^rd  (Royal Naval) Division, was captured by the advancing Germans, somewhere between Havrincourt and Bertincourt, on the Flesquieres-Havrincourt Salient. 

According to his “Casualty Form – Active Service”, CRC was twice treated for “d. C.T. [?disease of Connective Tissue] Foot” – which I take to be “Trench Foot” – in the Winter of  1916/17.  The first time was in the field,  at No. 47 C.C.S. (Casualty Clearing Station),  in Beauval, somewhat to the  west of Beaumont-Hamel, on November 27^th, 1916.     The  second time was to the rear, at No. 8 Red X.H. (Red Cross Hospital), in Paris-Plage (Le Touquet), on the coast, near Etaples Camp, on December 27^th.     CRC was granted two ten-day periods of home leave over the three-year course of his service, the first between January 20^th-30^th, 1917, and the second between February 12^th-22^nd, 1918.

CRC was reported in the “Nominal roll of casualties sustained during month of SEPTEMBER 1918” in the “Battalion War Diary” as having been killed on September 10^th! 

In fact, according to his “Casualty Record – Active Service” (Army Form B103), he  had been seriously wounded by shrapnel, or possibly shell fragments,  in the left arm (elbow) and leg (thigh, knee and ankle) on 12^th.  He was carried from the field to  the  5^th F.A. or Field Ambulance, and from there he was  taken – either by an actual ambulance or a  horse-drawn cart – to No. 46C.C.S or Casualty Clearing Station at Bac du Sud, near Bailleulval, just south-west of Arras.  From No. 46 C.C.S. at Bac du Sud, CRC was  transferred to  No. 12G.H. or General Hospital   in Rouen on September 13^th.  

And from there he was  repatriated to the U.K., on board His Majesty’s Hospital Ship “Formosa”, on 15^th.  He spent  the remaining two months of the war receiving treatment in hospitals in Keighley and Shoreham, and some time after the war convalescing in the  Star and Garter  Home in Richmond in Surrey.    On September 20^th, 1918, while he was at Shoreham, an X-Ray was taken of his wounded arm, and, according to his medical records,  “a piece of shrapnel was found, localised and measured”, but “the surgeon thought an operation inadvisable + it was left in situ”.  A later “Statement As To Disability” noted  “metal fragments still in arm”, and occasional “shooting pains”, on account of which he was entitled to  a Disability Pension of “5/- Dept Allowance + 3/6d  allot weekly”.    He had “copped a Blighty one”.  His only visible scar was the size and shape of a teardrop, under his eye.

CRC was almost certainly  wounded in an  operation  in the Battle of Havrincourt,  the first of the Battles of the Hindenburg Line, which took place on September 12^th, 1918.  The “Battalion War Diary” contains a narrative of operations.  According to this narrative, ‘D’ Company was subjected to “ … a very heavy barrage …  and Captain CHESTON  posted his men in shell-holes well in advance of the trench line [an old German defensive tactic devised on the Somme in 1916] and saved a good many casualties by doing  so as the trenches were very badly knocked about indeed”.  ‘C’ Company “ … tumbled up against quite unexpected German opposition in the portion of FAGAN SUPPORT … west of the Canal with several machine guns firing from shell-hole positions in the triangle to the south between it and the Canal [the Canal du Nord, which formed part  of the Hindenburg Line]”.  And ‘B’ Company “had to fight for every yard of the 700 of trench to be cleared … [and] …  did so in a way that speaks for itself of the spirit of the Company and its leaders.   … .  Twelve Machine Guns (heavy and light) were … taken by the Company, probably many others were over-ran and overlooked”.    The 24^th  Battalion’s total casualties in the action were recorded as “KILLED 8 + WOUNDED 49 + MISSING 1 = 58”.  The  men  recorded as killed were Privates  Frederick Child, W. Gowland, C. Hamilton, John Alfred  Mayes and Percy Charles Pereira on September 12^th, and Lance-Corporal Robert Burns, and Privates George Louis  Parris and John Robert  Warriner on 13^th; and the missing man was Private F. Coley. 

After the Great War

After the war, in 1919, CRC returned to work,   in Harrods, a luxury department store in Knightsbridge in the fashionable West End of London, which at the time provided  employment for  large numbers of  ex-Servicemen. 

In 1921, he came   to own and manage his own gentlemen’s outfitter’s shop at 180 South Ealing  Road in Ealing in Middlesex, and to live in the modest rooms above.  As  befitting for  someone in that line of  work, he was always very smartly  turned out.  In 1933, he bought his first car, a  “Baby Austin”, and thereafter spent a certain amount of time  each year travelling round the south of England selling his wares.  Besides his retail business, he also dabbled in property. 

CRC also returned to his sporting pursuits. 

He  played football for the amateur  side Ealing Wednesday, so-called  because most of the players were independent shopkeepers, and they preferred to play on early closing day, which was Wednesday, rather than on Saturday, so as not to lose their best trading day’s takings. 

The team had a particularly successful season in 1923-24, ending up as winners of the Ealing Hospital Cup, the Harrow Charity Shield, the Kingston and District Wednesday League, the Philanthropic Cup, and the Roose Francis Cup, and as runners-up in the Hounslow League and the Middlesex Mid-Week Cup.   They also won the London Mid-Week Cup in 1930-31.  CRC reportedly  also played on an ad hoc basis  for the professional side Fulham, who were in the Second Division of the English League, in  the early 1920s.   However, he always  supported, and would have liked   to play for, his local team, Brentford.  Notwithstanding this, he never really seriously  thought about  becoming a professional footballer, because the pay was poor – difficult to believe as that is today.   He  did, though, represent  the Thames Valley Harriers at long-distance running, and Middlesex at bowls, both, again, on an amateur basis.  He also played tennis to a high standard, including at the prestigious Queen’s Club in West Kensington in London, which, incidentally  his father had helped to build in 1886.  Here, he played with Fred Perry, who went on to win three Wimbledon Men’s Singles titles, in 1934, 1935 and 1936. 

On October 21^st, 1921, CRC  married Gladys Mabel Millard, familiarly known to him as “Mabs”. 

“Mabs’s” mother,  Sarah Ann Millard, incidentally, had served as a Voluntary Aid Detachment or V.A.D. nurse on the Home Front during the Great War.  In   1934, “Mabs”  had  a baby daughter, Peggy Anne, my mother.  The family would come to  enjoy taking in  not only sporting events but also sundry other entertainments such as comedy shows or musicals at the Chiswick Empire or the “Q” Theatre (in Kew), or, on special occasions,  in the West End.  During the Second World War of 1939-45, CRC  joined the Middlesex Home Guard (of “Dad’s Army” fame),  one of whose duties was to help to man  a heavy anti-aircraft  gun battery in Gunnersbury Park.  According to one family story, which may or may not be entirely true, at the beginning of the Vergeltungswaffen or Vengeance-Weapon campaign directed against  London, in June, 1944, he and his comrades, while attempting to shoot down a low-flying V-1 flying bomb or “Doodlebug”, instead inadvertently shot up  part of a nearby building!  

After the Second World War,   in 1954, his daughter Peggy Anne married Emrys Wynn Jones.  Then, in 1956,  his wife “Mabs” died; and,  in 1957, he  married his second wife, a divorcee, Alice Elizabeth Ashton, nee Gooding. 

CRC remained close throughout his later life to a number of his comrades from the Great War, especially to  William “Billy” Bentley, who he regarded as once having saved his life, and who was his best friend; and to Archibald  “Archie” Bannister, who was his best man.  The old soldiers  would all meet up in London every November, on the Friday closest to Remembrance Sunday, and would then all go together to the Cenotaph in Whitehall to attend the  National Service of Remembrance.  Like so many of his generation, CRC  scarcely ever spoke, at least outside this closed circle, of his wartime experiences.  However,  he did  once allude to the suffering of the horses on the Western Front (he had grown up  around horses).  He  never  committed to paper any of the thoughts or feelings he might have had about the war.  These he took with him to his grave.  

CRC died, after a sudden unexplained illness, on April 27^th, 1958, aged sixty-two, and was cremated in Mortlake Cemetery on May 2^nd.  I was only three months old when he died, and, sadly, have nothing to remember him by bar these bare  facts about his life, some faded   photographs, and  replacements for his lost 1914-15 Star, British War and Victory medals (“Pip, Squeak and Wilfred”).  I am strangely comforted, though, by the knowledge that he would have had memories of me.  My mother told me that she took me with her to see him when he was in what turned out to be his final days, and that he regained consciousness long enough to recognise  me,  and to lay his hand on my head,  before drifting away again, for the final time.