Charles William WEBB
Cap badge of the 4th Battalion of the Ox & Bucks Light Infantry.
Charles Webb’s name doesn’t appear on the memorial in St Matthew’s Church, but we feel that it should, as he lived in Grandpont and died whilst serving in the Second World War.
Charles William Webb was born in St Pancras in London on New Year's Day 1904. His parents were Charles and Eva (née Selby). Charles senior was a postman; he came originally from Kencot, near Carterton, West Oxfordshire, and Charles junior’s baptism took place in the Congregational Church in nearby Langford. Eva came from Leigh, near Cricklade, Wiltshire; as a young woman she worked as a live-in domestic servant in Kensington in London. Charles and Eva both had children from previous relationships: Charles had three sons by his first wife Mary, and Eva had an illegitimate son whose father was a Gloucestershire farmer, Alfred Selwyn. Mary died in 1901 aged 32, leaving Charles with three boys under the age of seven. He and Eva married in St Pancras in April 1903, and Eva’s son Maurice (then aged five) joined the family.
Charles junior was born in 1904, followed by Sydney (1905) and Henry (1907). In June 1910 Charles senior retired from the Post Office and was given a small pension for his fifteen years of service. Soon afterwards the Webb family moved from London to Alvescot, near Charles senior’s birthplace in West Oxfordshire. Here he found employment as a farm labourer (and subsequently as a carter), and a few years later they moved to nearby Broughton Poggs.
During the First World War Charles senior became a Corporal with the Royal Engineers. He served in France from 1915 to 1916 but was discharged as medically unfit for war service.
By 1921 Charles junior, now aged seventeen, was working as a gardener for the Hardcastle family at nearby Broughton Hall. His younger brother Sydney (fifteen) was a mason’s labourer for a builder in Filkins; and Henry (fourteen) was still at school. Charles’s four older half-brothers had all left home.
In November 1922 Charles joined the Ox & Bucks Light Infantry, service no. 5377164. He served for seven years, reaching the rank of Corporal, before being discharged in November 1929.
By October 1930 Charles had moved to Oxford and found employment as an under-porter at Corpus Christi College. Initially he lived in college; his salary was £2 a week (about £100 in today's money), with 5 shillings a week less during term time, when his meals were provided in college. His salary increased to £2 6 shillings (less 5 shillings for food during term time) from the end of October 1933.
On 9 April 1938 Charles married Frances King. Frances had been born in 1910 in Headington; she was the youngest of the three daughters of William King, an engineer, and his wife Maud (née Ayres). William’s mother – Frances’s grandmother – was Fanny Piddington, and through her Frances was related to Joseph Piddington. At the time of the 1911 census Frances and her family were living in Portslade-by-Sea near Brighton, but by 1921 they had returned to Oxford and settled at 82 Chilswell Road in Grandpont. Frances and her sister Doris were still at school, but their elder sister Violet (aged fifteen) was working as a part-time clerk for the famous Oxford provisions merchant Grimbly Hughes. Their father William King was a fitter’s mate for the Royal Engineers at Didcot. He died in 1935, aged 51.
Following Charles's marriage to Frances in 1938, he moved in with her family at 82 Chilswell Road. His mother Eva Webb died not long afterwards, aged 69, and was buried in St Peter’s churchyard in Filkins. His father Charles continued to live alone in Filkins until his own death in 1943, aged 77.
In April 1939, as Britain prepared for war, Charles joined the Territorial Army (the volunteer reserve force of the British Army). He re-entered the 4th Battalion of the Ox & Bucks Light Infantry. His army records describe him as 5ft 9in tall, weighing 144 lbs (10st 4lbs), and having a fresh complexion, grey eyes and brown hair. His religion was Church of England. He was called up for service on 25 August 1939 and, having already served with the regular army, he was promoted to Sergeant by April the following year.
In the 1939 register, taken on 29 September, four weeks after the outbreak of the Second World War, Charles’s wife Frances was recorded as living at 82 Chilswell Road and working as a retail grocer's ledger clerk, perhaps for Grimbly Hughes (like her older sister Violet). Living with her were her widowed mother Maud King; her sister Violet, who was employed as a wholesale grocer's stock book keeper (probably still for Grimbly Hughes); and a lodger, Albert Howard, who Violet would later marry. Albert worked for the Great Western Railway as a carriage and wagon examiner. Charles is not recorded in the 1939 register, having already left to rejoin the army, and the Corpus Christi list of college members for Michaelmas (autumn) term 1939 records him as 'Away on military service'.
After a period of training near Newbury, Charles and the 4th Battalion sailed from Southampton to Le Havre in northern France on 18 January 1940. Germany invaded on 10 May, and the fighting reached Charles and his battalion in mid-May, by which time they were stationed near the town of Cassel (about 60km south-east of Calais). Fierce fighting continued throughout May and into June – what became known as the Battle of France or the Western Campaign. The Dunkirk evacuation started on 26 May 1940, and the 4th Battalion, together with a number of other units from various regiments, was ordered to provide defensive rearguard action in an attempt to delay the advance of the German forces towards Dunkirk. Every day that the advance could be held back meant that more British troops could be sent back to England from the beaches (eventually more than 338,000 Allied soldiers were evacuated). The 4th Battalion was defending the strategic town of Cassel. The town was quickly surrounded by the enemy and the order was given to withdraw. The withdrawal was effected by small groups leaving separately and seeking to get to the Dunkirk perimeter. The casualty rate was high and only four members of the battalion are recorded as having reached England. Some two hundred wounded soldiers were left in Cassel, and most of the five hundred men who participated in the ‘breakout’ were captured by the Germans.
We don’t know what happened to Charles Webb but it’s likely that he was amongst those captured. His War Office file records that he was reported missing in June 1940, and that in September 1940 his next of kin (his wife Frances) reported that he had been a prisoner of war, though in an unknown camp. In the Corpus Christi ledger which recorded his pension scheme contributions there is a hand-written note saying “Died as a prisoner of war 29 July 1940”. According to his probate record, his War Office file, and his Commonwealth War Graves Commission record he died on 26 July 1940. He was 36. He was buried at Lille Southern Cemetery, 50km south-east of Cassel, though in Plot 2, not in Plot 3, which is where British prisoners of war were buried (and his name does not appear in the British Prisoners of War, 1939-1945 database on ancestry.co.uk). The headstone on his Commonwealth War Grave includes the inscription 'He lies and rests / With the brave / Of his young life, all / He gave for me & his country'. Charles is also commemorated on the Second World War memorial of his employer Corpus Christi College, and in the Second World War Book of Remembrance in the Regimental Chapel in Christ Church Cathedral in Oxford.
Charles left an estate worth £234 8s 9d (about £9,500 in today’s money) to his widow Frances. She also received the £111 9s which Charles had accumulated in his Corpus Christi pension fund over the course of his nine years of employment there. The War Office returned Charles's personal belongings to Frances in 1945; they comprised a pocket wallet, a watch in a case, a gold ring, souvenir notes, a purse, a note book, a paper of addresses, photographs, an identity disc, a fountain pen, a whistle, a pencil, and some souvenir coins.
Eighteen months after Charles’s death, Frances married Thomas Wilson, who earlier in the war had been living in Banbury and working as a toolroom labourer at the Northern Aluminium Company. They had two children: David born in 1948, and Frances in 1949.
Frances senior’s older sister Violet married Albert Howard in 1946 and the couple carried on living at 82 Chilswell Road with Violet’s mother Maud. Maud died in 1952, aged 66, and Albert less than two years later, aged 51. Violet continued to live in the house until her own death in 1986 at the age of 80.
Charles’s widow Frances died in November 1965 aged 55; she is buried in Wolvercote Cemetery.
Research by Mark Pear and Liz Woolley; with thanks to Harriet Patrick, Assistant Archivist, Corpus Christi College.
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