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Sgt. Charles Henry Downard
British Army 2/8 Battalion Royal Warwickshire
from:65 Kathleen Road, Hay Mills, Birmingham
(d.16th Aug 1916)
Charles Henry Downard, and his comrades of the 61th Division, were veterans of the Battle of Fromelles. Charles Henry Downard, born in 1888 in Brighton, Sussex, moved to Birmingham in 1893 and became a tram driver there in 1911. He married at age 26 Nellie Bracebridge, who gave birth to Gwendoline on 19th February 1915. She died aged 90 in 2005 and never saw her father.
Charles was enlisted as a sergeant in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment and because of varicose veins was not required for front line duty. However, he became so depressed by the numbers of men he trained were being killed, he volunteered for France. His unit, assigned to the 61th British Division, landed in France in May 1916. After a short training in trench warfare, the division was selected to participate in the Battle of Fromelles, 19 July 1916. On 9th August 1916, Charles left the billets at Riez bailleul for a ten-day tour in the trences. (In a letter home he complains that they are asking too much of the men). On the 16th August around 6.00 pm, Charles and his comrades were ordered to engage the right flank of the German Army at Fauquissart. Wounded by a mortar bomb that appears to have disembowelled him, he was evacuated to a military hospital where he died after two days. We have letters from Medical Officer and Nurse to his wife Nellie confirm that he survived 2 days after his official date of death. Charles is buried in the British military cemetery at Merville
In the 1930s, the British survivors, traumatized by these early battles, placed on the wall of the town hall in Laventie a plaque in memory of their comrades, such as Charles Downard, killed in battle nearby. This is a major place for the commemoration of the British victims of the battle. Red poppies are regularly hooked upon it. This year a new place will commemorate some of the victims of the Battle at Fromelles, where now lie some 250 bodies of Australian and British soldiers exhumed from mass graves dug by the Germans after the battle.
