Sergeant 7807 Charles Stewart Stevenson

 

2nd Essex Regiment

 

Died October 31, 1914. France and Flanders

 

 

Buried in Ration Farm Military Cemetery, La Chapelle-D'Armentieres, France, Grave VII. A. 20. 
 
Appears on:
 
Wick St Mary's Church with the information: Sgt
 
Pershore C of E School now in Pershore Working Men's Club

Son of Mr & Mrs T H Stevenson of Wick Post Office, Nr Pershore.

 Evesham Journal – 5th December 1914  DEATH OF SERGEANT CHARLES STEVENSON

Sergeant Charles Stevenson, fourth son of Mr & Mrs T H Stevenson of Wick Post Office, near Pershore was recently killed in action. The sad intelligence was tersely transmitted to the parents from the War Office accompanied by Lord Kitchener’s black edged letter expressing the sympathy of the King and Queen.  The place where he met his death was not stated.

Sergeant Stevenson, who was in the 2nd Essex Regiment, 12th Infantry 5th Division commonly known as “Pompadours” had come unscathed through several of the hottest engagements of this great war. His last letter to his Mother, received not so many days before the news came of his death, said “We are billeted in a small village after the worst day we had since we came out.  Luckily, very luckily, I have again escaped being hit. Nearly all my platoon got killed or wounded in the last fight.  I only have 16 men left out of 45. My officer got killed.  The Germans tried to break through but we stopped ‘em.”   The tone of the whole letter was in contrast to previous ones in which he wrote light-heartedly and jokingly. This was written just following a fierce struggle to which he alluded and it was evident he was depressed by the loss of so many of his comrades. 

From the second despatch of General Sir John French it is clear that the regiment in which Charlie Stevenson was sergeant was engaged in that memorable fight at the wood of Compaigne in the retreat from Mons where the famous Prussian Guards, the pride of the German Army, were shattered and decimated in their vain attempts to overpower the “thin red line” of the British Infantry.

Sergeant Stevenson is the second representative of the little village of Wick who has died while fighting for his country.  The first, as need hardly be recalled, for his death occasioned such sadness as will take a long lapse of time to modify, was Lieutenant Aubrey Hudson who fell in one of the very first skirmishes of the war on French territory.  Sergeant Stevenson, who was just 31 years of age, had served nine years as a soldier in this same regiment, the 22nd Essex. He was a fine type of soldier; he looked it, he loved the life, was thoroughly suited to it and was destined, we believe, to make a success of it.  He was widely known and popular in the neighbourhood of his home. In his youth, he was apprenticed for five years in the ironmongery business of the late Mr C H Field of Pershore. He went from Pershore to Ingatestone in Essex to an ironmongery firm there and it was while her that he enlisted.

Much sympathy is felt for the parents in the loss they are now feeling most acutely. Three other sons of Mr & Mrs Stevenson are serving their country – Glennis Stevenson, who at the outbreak of war left a good position at Rempston Hall  near Loughborough and is already a Lance-Corporal in the Sherwood Foresters; Thomas Stevenson who is a Petty Officer on board his Majesty’s ship Argonaut (he has been 12 years in the Navy) and James Stevenson in Canada who immediately allied himself to the Canadian Volunteer forces. Another son, George who served in the Berkshire Yeomanry through the Boer war and has four clasps, is only deterred from joining the Army by Doctor’s orders.  The Father, Mr T H Stevenson of Wick had a most adventurous life abroad. He is an ex-Sergeant of the Artillery, has been a transport officer in the Malay States in the Chinese Revenue Service and served for many years under the Indian Government as a qualified sanitary inspector, also holding the responsible post of Superintendency of Conservancy.  He was a transport officer in the Malay States during the Pabrang Rebellion. He and Mrs Stevenson lived for some time in China.

 

Information supplied by Trudy Burge

Visit herpersonal website at: trudyburge.webs.com