2nd Lieutenant, 3rd Battalion The Loyal North Lancashire Regiment, attached 1st Battalion.
Died of wounds on Thursday 28th January 1915, age 22.
Buried at Woburn Abbey Cemetery, Cuinchy, France, grave ref. II.A.14.
Former student of Teaching.
Charles was born in the summer of 1893 to Mr. W.H. Dawes, a well known family from the Cheetham Hill area. His father was resident in Blackpool at the outbreak of war.
An old boy of St. Oswald’s, Rochdale Road Charles also attended Manchester Municipal Secondary School. He became a pupil-teacher under the Manchester Education Committee at the Central High School and in April 1908 passed the first part of an exhibitions and bursaries examination. From 1912 to 1914 he was a student of the University of Manchester in the Elementary Training department. At the end of his course he was awarded the Teacher’s Certificate of the Board of Education
A prominent member of the Officer Training Corps during his time at the University he received his commission as a Lieutenant in the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment in August 1914 and was promoted to 2nd Lieutenant shortly before he died. According to a letter from his Captain he died from a bullet wound he received “while leading a small party of men to dislodge some Germans from a small post, which was, however, of some tactical importance”. The regimental history concurs recording that on the afternoon of the 27th the relief of the Royal Sussex was effected,and in the course of the night that followed the Battalion was ordered to carry out two offensives. On the left of their front “a party of thirty men, under 2nd Lieutenant Dawes, attacked the north side of the railway embankment with a view to capturing a German post situated about one hundred yards east of the culvert. The attack was started at 2 a.m., ten men advancing with hand grenades and slung rifles, while another ten men followed with fixed bayonets, the rest of the party moving in rear carrying tools and sandbags. 2nd Lieutenant Dawes was almost at once mortally wounded, being shot through the chest, and this initial attack failed”.
- Note: The Commonwealth War Graves Commission has his middle name as ‘Edward’, but other sources including the University 1922 Roll of Service and London Gazette record it as ‘Edmund’.