L/Cpl 51576 Charles Thorne Baggett

Born Charles Thorne Baggott in Ledbury, Herefordshire in the September quarter of 1888, he was the son of James and Maria (nee Lambert) Baggott who where married on the 02nd January 1876 at the Independent Chapel, Ledbury.  Charles was their third child of four children (2 boys, Alfred Thomas and Charles, and two girls Clara and Edith May).

On the 1891 Census, Charles Baggott aged 3 appears with his mother, aged 36, his step brother William J., aged 7  b,Monmouth, and sister Edith M., aged 1, as inmates of the Ledbury Workhouse, contrary to his father's promise before the courts. 

 

On the 1901 Census Maria, 47, widowed, and her children William 17, and Edith 10 are living on Bye Street, Ledbury. The Census also shows Charles Baggott aged 14 as a visitor at 16 Upton Rd, Tranmere, Wirral at his mother's brother household, Benjamin and wife Eliza Lambert. 

 

The 1911 Census shows him aged 23 back in Ledbury as a Servant /Barman at The Prince of Wales Pub in Church Lane, Ledbury.

Charles enlisted as Rifleman 4179 joining the 6th Battalion of The King's Liverpool Regiment (Liverpool Rifles), he embarked aboard the SS Princess Victoria from Folkestone-Boulogne on 15th July 1916, reaching the 24th  Infantry Base Depot on 16th July 1916. He proceeded to 11th Entrenching Battalion on 02nd August 1916 and proceeded to to the 17th Battalion K.L.R. on 05th August 1916 and was posted from 05th September 1916 to 17th Battlion K.L.R with the new service number 51576. 

 

He was promoted to Lance Corporal.

By April 1917 the Battle of Arras (also known as the first Battle of the Scarpe) began on 9th April 1917 ( Easter Monday) the details of the day show:

17^th,  19^th & 20th  Battalion at the  Battle of Arras 09/04/1917

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 3.7p.m. At 4p.m.Lieut Beaumont, commanding “A" Company, reported that he had had some forty casualties in passing through the enemy’s barrage. The next message, timed 4.40p.m., 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 was one of the Pals killed in action. He was 28 years of age.

 

He is commemorated with a CWGC Military Headstone at St. Martin Calvaire British Cemetery at I. A.18 where his headstone bears the epitaph:

“REST IN THE LORD”

The village of St. Martin-sur-Cojeul was taken by the 30th Division on 9 April 1917. It was lost in March 1918 but retaken in the following August. St. Martin Calvaire British Cemetery was named from a calvary which was destroyed during the war. It was begun by units of the 30th Division in April 1917 and used until March 1918. Plot II was made in August and September 1918. The cemetery contains 228 Commonwealth burials of the First World War, five of them unidentified. There are also three German graves within the cemetery. The cemetery was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens.

On 21 April 1917 his mother, Maria of Bye Street Ledbury placed a death notice in the Ledbury Guardian. It stated he was her only son which indicates his elder brother William was his father's first born from his first wife.

His mother received Charles' Army Pay of £4:6s:6d on 16/07/1917, in addition she received a War Gratuity of £6 on 21/10/1919. She also claimed the Dependants Pension.