CHARLIE Crowther had no need to go to war. As the booming guns of the First World War spread blood and gore across Europe in a hellish nightmare, he could have been safe at home in Worcestershire in a well-paid job with a loving family and four small children.

At 43, he was beyond the age when he would automatically be expected to volunteer to fight for his King and Country. Kitchener’s famous poster “Your Country Needs You”, didn’t necessarily apply to him.

Yet volunteer he did. Charlie Crowther joined the Worcestershire Regiment in the early autumn of 1914, carried along by the tidal wave of patriotism and a sense of duty and invincibility that swept across a nation still touched by the greatness and grandness of the Victorian era.

He left the pastoral peace of the village of Wilden, between Stourport-on-Severn and Kidderminster, to fight in the trenches of France and then sailed with the British Mediterranean Expeditionary Force to Gallipoli, where he was hit in the lung and shoulder by shrapnel on the morning of October 29, 1915, while out with a wire-cutting party.

Mortally wounded, Charlie was transferred to hospital on Malta and died on February 2, 1916, from a combination of battle wounds, dysentery and frostbite.

There, his story might have ended had it not been for a remarkable discovery by his granddaughter 90 years later. Ann Crowther decided to research the family history and looked once more at an old box of letters that had been kept by her grandmother, Charlie’s wife.

She said: “I remember briefly reading a few of the letters when I was a little girl but they were full of ‘grown-up stuff’ and not interesting at all to anyone of the age I was then.

“When my grandmother died, the letters went to my aunt and when she died in 1973, they were passed on to me, but I never looked at them again properly until three years ago.

“I was almost dumbstruck. As I opened the fragile pile I realised about 30 of them had been written by my grandfather from Gallipoli.

Some were tattered and torn or covered in mud. On others the writing was virtually illegible. But there were many I could read clearly and they made my heart weep. I don’t mind admitting I cried when I read them. They were so heartbreaking.

“My immediate thought was they ought to go to a museum but then I decided to do some copies for relatives, adding footnotes to explain certain points.”

That work gradually evolved into turning the letters into a book. The immensely poignant Yours Ever, Charlie – A Worcestershire Soldier’s Journey to Gallipoli has just been published. It is Ann Crowther’s first foray as an author, for despite being a keen historian and having read the subject at university, she made a career as a professional musician.

She spent all her childhood in Wilden and after her mother’s early death she was brought up by her aunt Marjorie Crowther, a teacher at the local primary school.

Although now living near Liverpool, Ann has retained strong links with the village and the Kidderminster/Stourport area and on July 17 she will be giving a talk about her book in Wilden church in the company of Earl Baldwin.

The Baldwin family, one of Worcester’s most famous, knew the Crowthers well. Charlie’s father was coachman to Alfred and Louisa Baldwin of Lower Park House, Bewdley, for 57 years, and as a boy Charlie used to play with their son Stanley – later to become three times British Prime Minister – and his cousin, the writer and poet Rudyard Kipling. A wealthy industrialist and Kidderminster MP, Alfred Baldwin spent nearly half a century shaping Wilden into a community along the lines of the Cadbury family’s Bournville.

When the First World War broke out, Charlie, who lived at Coronation Cottages, Wilden, was working in the nearby Baldwin ironworks and had risen to the position of “master roller”, a post for which he wore a bowler hat to signify his status.

Fourteen years earlier, his older brother Harry had volunteered for the Boer War “on a whim” and although Harry returned injured and mentally scarred, the celebrations of his send off – he was carried shoulder high to the railway station with the sound of cheers ringing in his ears – resonated with his younger brother.

Ann said: “Harry’s enthusiastic volunteering and the carnival atmosphere of his send-off give us more insight as to why Charlie should, at the age of 42, cheerfully set off to right the world, leaving behind a pregnant wife, four small children, aged one to eight, and ageing parents.

“In the agricultural shires of middle England, such men with good, well-paid jobs did not need to seek the king’s shilling.

“But they had lived very restricted, sheltered lives in the womb-like security of villages such as Wilden. Fired with the excitement of going outside Worcestershire, never mind abroad, it must have seemed like a good adventure at the time. They expected to bustle off abroad, sort out the enemy and be home in time for both victory and Christmas.

“It is touching to observe in Charlie’s letters home how it finally dawns on him that it is going to be ‘a long job’.”

Some of the letters were written from the trenches as the shells whistled over and exploded nearby.

It almost beggars belief that under fire he could write: “October 12, 1915. Dear wife, I got off the boat last night (at Gallipoli) and we were sent straight up to the trenches.

They were firing all the time, it was a bit rough getting there but we got there alright. I am writing these few lines while the shells are going over us. I hope that you and the kids keep well. I am quite well myself at present. I will write again as soon as I have a chance. We are having it warm days, but it is cold nights.

Give them all a kiss from me.

Goodbye for the present. Charlie.”

Charlie Crowther was the first Wilden man to volunteer for the First World War. He was also the first to die. His grave is in the Royal Naval Cemetery at Bighi, Malta.

● Yours Ever, Charlie – A Worcestershire Soldier’s Journey to Gallipoli by Ann Crowther, £12.99, is published by the History Press.