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Son of Alice Anne and the late William Edward Britten, of Hereford. Next-of-kin listed as C. F. Kelly, of Walmer, Port Elizabeth. Born on March 6, 1876, in Stapleton, Co. Hereford. He was the son of William Edward Britten, who was secretary of the Hereford Herd Book Society and a well-known local figure in the cattle business. From 1889 to 1893 Charlie attended the Hereford Cathedral School, where he played centre three-quarter for the rugby team, and won the sixteen-mile "Hare and Hounds". Upon leaving school, he worked in a bank for a few years, then volunteered for the Imperial Yeomanry during the Boer War and served in the 13th (Shropshire) Company as a trooper in 1900-01. After that war, he worked as a mining engineer on the gold mines in Rhodesia and Johannesburg. He married Helen Nicholson Templeton in the Pro-Cathedral, Salisbury, Rhodesia, on July 8, 1908. His wife was a Scottish widow who travelled from Scotland with a friend as chaperone, travelling the last 2,000 miles to Salisbury by ox-wagon. She bore him one son in 1909 in Rhodesia, and later died in childbirth in Johannesburg in 1913. At the outbreak of WWI in 1914, Charlie was working at the Wolhuter Mine in Johannesburg. He resigned immediately and volunteered for the Cape Artillery, serving as a Gunner in the 12th Citizen Battery of that regiment during the invasion of German South-West Africa by the Union forces. At the end of that campaign, he returned to England, leaving his son Tommy in the care of friends in South Africa. He applied for and was granted a Temporary Commission "for the duration of the war" in September 1915, and on October 1st he was gazetted "Second Lieutenant (on probation)", in the Royal Field Artillery, as a member of the Special Reserve of Officers. While serving with the 5th Division Ammunition Column during the battle of the Somme, he received gunshot wounds to the chest and thigh on July 25th, 1916. He was removed to No. 2 Stationary Hospital in Abbeville, where he died on July 29th. Commemorated on the war memorial of Ol Herefordians in Hereford Cathedral, the Tupsley War Memorial, and the Cenotaph in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Through his son Tommy he currently has living descendants in the UK, the USA, the Channel Islands, South Africa, Iceland, Jordan, and Thailand. ref. South African Roll of Honour 1914-1918 |
