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Christopher Charles FryerChristopher Charles Fryer, known as Charles, was born on 21 February 1897, the third child of Albert Joseph Fryer and Flora Mary née Hitchings. Albert had previously run the Coffee House on the village green, but this had closed some years earlier and he was now a haulier. The family was a large one, with only Charles, his brothers Clevedon Wells and Edgar John and their sister, Edith, still living at home in 1911, by which time Charles was a hall boy; family members believe that he may have found work in Slimbridge. Charles enlisted early, joining the 9th (Service) Battalion of the Gloucestershire Regiment. He entered France on 20 September 1915 and in November moved to Salonika where the Balkan theatre operations were intended to support Serbia against invasion by Bulgaria and Austro-Hungary. Charles was later invalided home with dysentery. After recovery he was posted to the 12th Battalion in France as a signaller. His battalion suffered very many casualties during the first two weeks of October 1917 during the battle of Passchendaele. On 1 November, the battalion was in the front line near Sanctuary Wood and was being relieved by the 1st Cheshires, a dangerous time as troop movements usually attracted shellfire. Private Christopher Charles Fryer was wounded in the chest, thigh and head and died on 3 November at a Casualty Clearing Station; his family report that a nurse had guided his hand to write a last letter home. Charles was interred at the CWGC Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery at Poperinghe, near Ypres. He was posthumously awarded the British War Medal and Victory Medal, and is commemorated on both the Frampton war memorial and the plaque in the village hall. The Slimbridge war memorial also remembers a Charles Fryer but this is likely to have been Charles William Fryer of Slimbridge Street, Cambridge, who also served with the Gloucestershire Regiment. |