Between August 2014 and March 2019 the Andover Advertiser ran a series of articles recounting the lives and deaths of each of the men on Andover memorial. The series also identified ‘missing’ First World War casualties from the town, and those men and women were added to the memorial in 2018, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Armistice. All but one of the men were eventually positively identified, however, the exact identity of ‘Charles Warren’ remained a mystery. Until now! Finally, thanks to the Western Front Association’s diligence in preserving documentation, we can reveal the story of the last man to be identified on Andover’s Great War memorial.

Charles Arthur Warren was born at 245 Dereham Road, Norwich on November 27, 1899. He was the third of at least five children (two girls and three boys) of Londoner, Charles Howard Warren, and Matilda Jane Smith, who had married in Norwich in 1895.

At the time of Charles’ birth his father was living at 79 Loftus Road in Shepherd’s Bush, London and was working as a grocer’s assistant. The rest of the family joined Charles snr in Shepard’s Bush shortly after, before moving a few years later to Hounslow in Middlesex.

Unfortunately, little is currently known about Charles’ early life, or his military service. His service papers were among the sixty percent of First World War soldiers’ records destroyed by fire, caused by the bombing of a warehouse in Arnside Street, Woolworth on the night of September 7/8, 1940 during the German Blitz on London. The warehouse stored all manner of documents relating to the Great War; a catastrophic disaster for today’s military historians and genealogists alike.

However, it is known from the 1921 publication Soldiers Died in the Great War that he was living in East Dulwich, South London when he joined the army. He was probably conscripted shortly after his 18th birthday in November 1917 and travelled to the recruitment office in Flodden Street, Camberwell to enlist.

Charles was posted to the Duke of Cambridge’s Own (Middlesex Regiment) as Private 60998 and after training went overseas to France on August 8, 1918. He would have spent time at a base depot, learning the rudiments of trench warfare, before being transferred to the 9th (Service) Battalion Royal Fusiliers (City of London Regiment) on August 25, with the new service number GS-79380.

At the time, the 9th Fusiliers was engaged north of the River Somme in what would later become known as the Hundred Day Offensive, a series of massive Allied attacks which would eventually lead to the end of the Great War.

On the day Charles was posted to his new battalion, August 25, it attacked on a front some 1,200 years wide, advancing to the south-western edge of the village of Fricourt. It is unlikely that he was with it for the attack, however, and he probably joined the unit on August 26 or 27 when the battalion was out of the front line near Mametz.

Charles’ battalion re-joined the attack at 4.55am on August 28, advancing 2,000 yards taking the village of Hardencourt, capturing fifty prisoners and sixteen machine guns in the process. However, it suffered heavy casualties, with 153 officers and men killed, missing or wounded. Among those killed in action that day was 18 year-old Charles Warren. He had been with the battalion for just two or three days and it was his first time in action.

He was buried in a mass grave with seven other men of the battalion, probably a shell hole, half a mile north of Hardecourt, just west of the Hardecourt to Guillemont road. It would be two more years before his and his comrades bodies were recovered by the Graves Registration Unit and reinterred in Delville Wood Cemetery, Longueval, two miles to the north.

On the face of it, Charles Arthur Warren has no direct connection to Andover and for this reason it was very difficult to positively identify him, or any other Charles Warren, as the man commemorated on Andover’s cenotaph. However, earlier this year the Western Front Association released a series of pension records which it had rescued from destruction a few years ago.

A search of this new archive revealed records that showed Charles’ mother, Matilda, had claimed a pension following the death of her eldest son. On the two index cards related to her claim it It is recorded that in April 1919 she was living in Andover, at 65 South Street.

At some point the Warren family had moved to Andover and although Charles himself had probably never set foot in the town, when the then vicar, Revd Walter Smith, had made a plea in the Andover Advertiser in July 1919 for the names of any fallen service men who should be added to the towns proposed memorial, his mother must have put his name forward for inclusion.

Without the tenacity of the Western Front Association saving the 2.9 million pension records of Great War solders, it might never have been determined exactly who the ‘Charles Warren’ recorded on Andover’s war memorial actually was. Now at last the sacrifice he made can be remembered alongside the others on the cenotaph, and the job of positively identifying the men recorded on its roll of honour is finally complete.