217872 2nd Lt. Charles Abbott MC.British Army 1st Btn. Hampshire Regiment 'Cousin Charlie' was actually a first Cousin of my father, Leonard Baker, they were very close, Dad also served in WW1. Cousin Charlie began as a private, Pte. C B M Abbott, 5321 No 1 Company, 2nd Battalion H A. I don't know when he became an officer but I know he received the Military Cross after some appalling carnage in the trenches he was one of some half dozen survivors, a VC and an MC was awarded and the survivors were told to draw lots for who got what. He later moved to South Africa and became an MP in Cape Town for General Smuts party, I have a letter he wrote back home after he had returned to Cape Town just as WW2 began, he tells us he took cine film of the Glorious a day or so before it was sunk and that the Union Castle liner he was on was later torpedoed. He visited us after the war, and retired to Sandwich, Kent where he died around 1969. He had one child, a son Norman who ran a shop in East Anglia, if still alive he would be in his 70s.
|