Charles Percy TURNER

202339, Private. b. 1895, Bradford d. Thu. 3rd May 1917 (aged 22).

Another casualty from the Battle of Oppy Wood, Percy had been sent to France at the end of the previous year to join the 2nd/4th Battalion, Duke of Wellington’s Regiment, and the time he spent with the regiment would have been primarily in the build up to this attack at the beginning of the Arras Offensive.

Soldiers life in the trenches outside of offensives consisted very much of a set routine, with much time dedicated to monotonous and repetitive tasks. For example, there was ‘stand-to’ at about an hour before dawn. Every soldier in the front line was expected to stand on the fire-step (the step allowing the soldiers to see the enemy trenches) because dawn was the time when the enemy was most likely to attack. Additionally, there was ‘stand-down’ last thing at night where the procedure was repeated for another hour. During the night, most regiments would be put to use on routine maintenance tasks, such as repairing damaged trenches or fortifying trenches with sand bags.

During the day troops usually found that they had time to sleep, other than those on guard duty, and many troops passed at least some time every day ‘chatting’. This is not in the same sense as we know it today, although our meaning of the word is directly related. In the Great War chatting was another word for delousing oneself, as every soldier in the line was riddled with lice – most soldiers had thousands of lice on them at any one time. Our meaning today possibly follows on from then, as it became a popular way of socialising in the trenches – you went to chat with your mates every now and again.

The concept of hygiene was also a difficult one in the Great War, as soldiers were only issued with enough rations of water for them to drink so often went for weeks or even months without washing or having a bath. When the troops did eventually manage to get a bath, their clothes were totally cleansed of lice, but unfortunately not of lice eggs, so only hours after being cleaned up the soldiers found that these lice eggs hatched due to their body heat and they were again crawling with lice.

These conditions would have been just a few of a whole series of horrific experiences Percy would have gone through in his few months in the trenches, and would probably have made his home lifestyle seem palatial by comparison.

The son of Charles Turner, Percy had grown up at 9 Grange Terrace, Clayton and worked in his father’s wool merchant business until he enlisted. His probate records shows he left a sum of £542 18s to his father Charles Turner, Wool merchant.

Charles is commemorated on the Arras Memorial, Arras, France.