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Cpl. Charles Frederick Draper
British Army 9th Btn Rifle Brigade
from:Merstone, Isle of Wight
(d.1st July 1916)
Born at Arreton, Isle of Wight on 20th August 1889, Charles Frederick Draper was the youngest of the eight children of William and Emily Draper. His father was an agricultural labourer and later road foreman for the local District Council. Charley presumably excelled at school, because he left his agricultural roots and the Isle of Wight behind him and became a solicitor’s clerk. The 1911 census finds him as a law clerk in lodgings at Shepton Mallet.
Charley enlisted in the 9th Battalion, The Rifle Brigade at Winchester on 22nd May 1915, aged 25 years and 8 months. Like the rest of his family, he was short in stature, standing 5’ 5†tall and his enlistment papers state that he had scars on both groins from a previous hernia operation. Where he spent his early months in the army I do not know, but he embarked for France on 6th April 1916 and on 12th April he was transferred to a Machine Gun Depot and arrived at Étaples on 17th of the month.
He joined his battalion in the field on 20th May and was wounded in action on 27th June. According to the medical report he suffered shell wounds to his arm, leg, abdomen and chest. He died on 1st July 1916 and was interred in the Communal Cemetery at Habareq. He is also commemorated on his parents grave stone at Gore Cemetery, Arreton. Charley never married. He left a school atlas, published in 1913, in which he, or a member of the family, traced the progress of the war by underlining key locations. It remains a treasured family possession.
