Pte 47129 Charles Downs

• Age: 27
• From: Leigh, Lancs
• Regiment: The King's (Liverpool Regiment) 19th Btn
• K.I.A Monday 9th April 1917
• Commemorated at: Arras Memorial
  Panel Ref: Bay 3

Charles Downs was born in 1890 in Leigh and was the son of John Downs and his wife Mary (nee Hayes) who were married in 1876.
His parents were both from Leigh, and had ten children, all born in Leigh. Charles had older siblings Martha Ellen, Thomas, and Elizabeth Ann. Sadly, the next four children died young: Sarah, James, Jane, and John. He had an elder brother Fred and a younger sister Mary.

In 1891 the family lives at 62 Trafalgar Street in Leigh (birthplace for all family members given as Bedford, Lancashire, which is a district of Leigh. His father John is a coal miner, Martha, 14, works as a cotton creeler. Thomas 13, and Elizabeth 4, are at school, Fred is 3, and Charles 1 year old.

At the time of the 1901 census the family were living at 82 Trafalgar Street, Leigh. Charles is 11, and has three siblings – Elizabeth aged 21, Fred who is 13 and working as a cotton scavenger and Mary aged 8. Their father John is 51 and is a coal mine hewer, and their mother is 48. Everyone in the family was born in Leigh.

Elizabeth died the following year, at the age of 22.

The 1911 census records Charles aged 21 living with his parents and his sister Mary at 35 Henry Street, Leigh. Charles is working as a piecer and Mary aged 18 as a weaver, both in a cotton factory. His father is aged 61 and is an iron foundry labourer for an agricultural implement maker, his mother is aged 58. The family also have a boarder called William Dixon who shown as having the same occupation as John, so probably a workmate. This census also shows that John and Mary had been married 35 years and that Mary had borne ten children, only five of which were living.

Wigan County memorial site states that before enlisting Charles was employed at the Mather Lane Spinning Company, which was a large employer in the town.

Charles married Elizabeth Hayes in the Autumn of 1915 at St Mary's Church, Leigh. Elizabeth was born in Leigh on 15th August 1887, and had lived in Trafalgar Street.  No records of children born to the marriage have been found.

He enlisted in Leigh and was serving in the 19th Battalion, The King’s Liverpool Regiment as Private No 47129 when he was killed in action on the 09th April 1917, aged 27. Based on the amount of the War Gratuity and his regimental number, Charles enlisted (or was conscripted) some time in 1916, serving at most one year before he was killed.

17^th,  19^th & 20th  Battalion at the  Battle of Arras 09^th April 1917

Everard Wyrall records the events of the day  in Volume 2 of his History of the King's Regiment (Liverpool).

The 89^th Brigade formed up for the attack with the 19^th King's on the right and the 20^th King’s on the left. The 17^th King’s supplied the “mopping up" parties and he 2nd Bedfords were in close support.

It was just after 3pm when the advance began “According to scheduled time the waves advanced in good style and with determination; everyone was cheerful and in the best of spirits”

That advance is described by others as magnificent. From the OP’s the observing officers saw a wonderful sight – long lines of men advancing steadily up a long and gradual slope towards the enemy’ front line. Then suddenly they disappeared. The observers quite pardonably, imagined that the German front line had fallen into the hands of the assaulting troops and that the latter were on the way to the enemy’s support line. Alas something very different had happened. When the advancing troops had reached the summit of the long slope up which they advanced the ground suddenly dipped before the German front line , and when the observing officers thought they  were already in the Bosche lines they had not, as a matter of fact, even reached the wire. What the observers took to be the front line was really the support line; the front line could not be seen  - it lay just behind the crest of that slight rise in the ground.

The attacking waves of the 19^th King’s got within 100 yards of the German wire but were then held up. They were faced by three belts of entanglements, practically untouched by our artillery, and nothing could be done but to dig in or else take shelter in the many shell- shell-with which “No Man’s Land" was pitted. By this time the battalion’s losses were very heavy, and when darkness fell “A" and “B" Companies (about 140 in all) lay in shell-holes, two or three hundred yards north east of St. Martin, but just south of the Cojeul River, and “C" and “D" Companies (140 all ranks) were along the river bank, but on the northern side about 150 yards north east of St. Martin.

The first waves of the 20^th King’ advanced at 3.7pm. At 4pm Lieut Beaumont, commanding “A" Company, reported that he had had some forty casualties in passing through the enemy’s barrage. The next message, timed 4.40pm, stated that the position of the battalion at that period was on a crest in front of the enemy’s wire and about 100 yards from it. On the right the 21^st Division was observed to have penetrated the enemy’s front line, but in the left the right Battalion of the 21^st Brigade (the Wilts) was on the St. Martin- Neuville Vitasse road; the left flank of the 20^th King's was, therefore, “ in the air”.

Urgent messages were sent up from Battalion Headquarters to “push on, keeping in touch with right” But little else could be accomplished until those formidable belts of wire had been cut sufficiently to allow the rapid passage of the attacking troops, headed by their bombers.

At 9:30 that night 89^th Brigade Headquarters ordered both the 19^th and 20^th Battalions to withdraw, the former to the two sunken roads running south east from St. Martin, the latter to north west of St. Martin; the guns had been ordered to cut the enemy’s wire during the night in preparation for another attack during the 10^th April.

Of the 17^th King’s  - the “moppers up" – there is little to relate. There was nothing to “mop up" so that they did not function. Yet they had shared all the perils of the advance, and when  after they had fallen back and at midnight held the following positions, “B", “C", and “D" Companies in and around the sunken road north of Boiry-Becquerelle and “A" Company in trenches west of Henin, they lost 2 officers and 16 other ranks killed, and 3 officers and 48 other ranks wounded. 

Charles' body was not recovered from the battlefield or was subsequently lost as he has no known grave and is commemorated on the Arras Memorial, France.

The ARRAS MEMORIAL commemorates almost 35,000 servicemen from the United Kingdom, South Africa and New Zealand who died in the Arras sector between the spring of 1916 and 7 August 1918, the eve of the Advance to Victory, and have no known grave. The most conspicuous events of this period were the Arras offensive of April-May 1917, and the German attack in the spring of 1918. Canadian and Australian servicemen killed in these operations are commemorated by memorials at Vimy and Villers-Bretonneux. A separate memorial remembers those killed in the Battle of Cambrai in 1917. Both cemetery and memorial were designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, with sculpture by Sir William Reid Dick. The memorial was unveiled by Lord Trenchard, Marshal of the Royal Air Force on the 31 July 1932 (originally it had been scheduled for 15 May, but due to the sudden death of French President Doumer, as a mark of respect, the ceremony was postponed until July).

He was reported killed in the Liverpool Daily Post 11th May 1917:   

Liverpool R. - Downs, 47129, C. (Leigh)

Soldiers Effects, including a War Gratuity of £3 to widow Elizabeth, who was awarded a pension of 13/9d a week from October 1917, her residence at that time 84 Selwyn Street, Leigh.

His widow Elizabeth remarried in 1921 to James Smith at St. Mary's, Leigh.

His father died in 1925 aged 75 and his mother in 1930 aged 78.

His widow, Elizabeth appears to have died in 1960 aged 75.

Charles is commemorated in St. Mary's Church, Leigh, and on the Leigh Cenotaph.

We currently have no further information on Charles Downs, If you have or know someone who may be able to add to the history of this soldier, please contact us.