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L/Cpl. Charles Joseph Beacham
British Army 4th Battalion The Rifle Brigade
from:London
(d.25th Aug 1915)
This is taken from an article in a magazine called Light and Truth dated October 1915:
Fell In Action, August 25TH 1915.
A/Cpl. Charles Joseph Beacham, 4th Battalion Rifle Brigade, was one of our heroic men who answered his country's call last December. He had previously served his King nine years in India, and after three years' service in the Homeland, he returned to civil life, and was free from further military service. Notwithstanding this, when war broke out he felt the call of duty, and in reply to his wife said: "I should feel a coward if I stayed at home." So on December 4 he again answered the call of King and Country.
He and his excellent wife joined us in membership at St. George's Hall some three years ago. Mr. Beacham's duties prevented his being in regular attendance at divine worship on Sundays, but when off duty it was a pleasure to see him and his wife sitting together in the House of God.
We greatly sympathise with Mrs. Beacham in her sore bereavement; she is a capable worker, and rendered this Mission valued service during the great Dock Strike both as a voluntary visitor and assistant in the extra clerical work which the Strike involved.
Her husband is one of the many obscure, unknown heroes of this terrible war, who, if they had their due, would doubtless have received the Victoria Cross for distinguished and heroic service. Mrs. Beacham was accustomed to receive a daily letter from her husband, and has given me the privilege of reading some of them, from one of which I have taken the liberty of making the following extracts.
This letter was written from:- "Somewhere, 15/5/1915. "...I am pleased to say I am in the best of condition again. My slight wound has healed up. The captain of my company was shot down and me and my chum were called on to pick him up, and we had to carry him across an open space, where shells were bursting and falling like rain, but, thank God we got him through safe, and ourselves, except for a wound behind the right ear for me, and my chum was hit on the right knee. It was as if we were walking to our deaths, for scores fell trying to reach the other side, and we went through it three times and only got slightly wounded, and mine is quite healed now. Then, two days after, we had a badly wounded man in the trench, and they asked for two volunteers to carry him to safety, and me and my chum carried him away, and the Germans fired on us all the way. Shells were bursting all round us as we carried him down the road, then we got into a ditch and walked along that but they still fired, then we got into the growing corn and, thank God we got him to safety. There is no doubt God's guarding hand has been over us two during the last week, for we have faced death to help others and pulled through. The doctor says we were heroes, but the sacrifice was too great, and he could not understand men facing death like that. I told him we were thinking of the wounded man not of ourselves. At the time I lost all my belongings...all we had was what we stood up in...My regiment has been in the heaviest and thickest fighting, and about 300 of us faced thousands of Germans and kept them back and saved the situation, and they are all proud of us and say they do not know how we kept them back as we were only a handful; they could have walked over us, but they have not got the pluck to face our bayonets. I will tell you all about it when I come home...Have you read the story of Neuve Chapelle...Our battalion made their name there and my chum was recommended for gallantry there. Poor Humphrys is dead, Manville was hit in the back, and I carried Jimmy Fryer out on a stretcher from the trenches on Wednesday night, shot in the stomach."
What manner of men and women ought you and I be for whom such a price is being paid?
Jennie Johnson.
