Thank you to Jane Anthony for this research.
Like his younger brother, Henry James Charman, Frank was one of the four children of Frank and Elizabeth Charman.
Frank’s full name was William Frank Charman and he was born in Marylebone in May 1891. His father at that time was a butler working in Paddington. In July of the same year Frank was christened at St Paul’s Dorking. His parents address was then recorded as 8 Orchard Road in Dorking and his father’s occupation was again a butler. By the following year his parents were living at Forest Green which is the address recorded in the baptism register of Okewood hill when his brother Henry James was baptised there in 1892. By 1903 when Frank’s sister Gladys was baptised, their father had changed his occupation to a bootmaker. The 1911 census shows the family at Okewood Hill when Frank senior’s occupation had now changed to a boot dealer.
Frank had joined the army while he was still a teenager and is shown in the 1911 census as a 19 year old gunner with the 1st Battery of the Royal Field Artillery at Woolwich.
He later served in “D” Battery of the 23rd Army Brigade. Frank was killed in action on 8th January 1918 aged about 27. He is buried at Bard Cottage Cemetery in Belgium.
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission gives the following information about this cemetery
“For much of the First World War, the village of Boesinghe (now Boezinge) where the Bard Cottage Cemetery is, directly faced the German line across the Yser canal. Bard Cottage was a house a little set back from the line, close to a bridge called Bard’s Causeway, and the cemetery was made nearby in a sheltered position under a high bank.
Burials were made between June 1915 and October 1918 and they reflect the presence of the 49th (West Riding), the 38th (Welsh) and other infantry divisions in the northern sectors of the Ypres Salient, as well as the advance of artillery,” which is how Frank Charman probably lost his life, to the area in the autumn of 1917.
Like his brother Henry, Frank is commemorated at Abinger, Okewood Hill and Forest Green.
| Born | Okewood Hill, Surrey | |
| Lived | Guildford, Surrey | |
| Son of | Frank and Elizabeth Charman | |
| Brother of | Henry James Charman | |
| Husband of | Mary Charman | |
| Regiment | Royal Field Artillery | |
| Number | 64665 | |
| Date of Death | 8th January 1918 | |
| Place of Death | Boezinge, Belgium | |
| Cause of Death | Killed in action | |
| Age | 22 | |
| Memorial | Bard Cottage Cemetery, Boezinge, Belgium |
