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Pte. James Charles Watts
British Army 5th Btn Yorkshire Regiment
from:Beverley
(d.27th Feb 1916)
James Charles Watts enlisted in Beverley and served in the Yorkshire Regiment, 5th Battalion. James was killed on the 27th of February 1916 and is buried in Maple Copse Cemetery Belgium.
James Charles Watts was born in 1875 in Aldershot to an Army family and went on to be one of fourteen children, several who joined the services. Census records show him to move from Aldershot to Beverley via Sheffield. He married Rosa Butters in 1903 in Beverley and had two children, Charles and Wilfred. He had served in the East Yorks Regiment from 1891 to 1908 and then worked in a local tannery. Judging by his low Battalion number he must have been in the local Territorials some time before the War started.
The Battalion Diary records that they were in the trenches in Sanctuary Wood, East of Ypres, at the time of his death, but a family story says that he was a devout Catholic and was trying to "recover" a cross from a church when he lost his life.
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