Appearson The South East Agricultural College, Wye.

Early Life :

Education & Career :

He was educated at Hazelwood School at July 1895 which left with no school in mind. He went on to Bradfield College from May 1896 to December 1901. On leaving school he entered the Royal Military College Sandhurst joining the 1st King’s Indian Cadets in 1902.

In 1905 he entered the service of the East India Railway Company and was Assistant District Traffic Superintendent at Howrah when war broke out.

He was married at Allahabadin India to Phyllis (nee Holl) on the 27th of November 1907. She was later remarried to Sydney Wheeler Halsted at St Luke's Church, Grayshott on the 27th of April 1922.

Service Life:

Campaigns:

• The First World War 1914-1918, World-wide.

At the outbreak of war the British, together with Indian troops, resolved to protect oil supply in the region by occupying the area around Basra at Abadan. This evolved into a series of campaigns towards Baghdad against the Turkish forces as Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) was part of the Ottoman Empire. Meetings in late 1914 and into 1915 led the Viceroy and Indian government at Simla to reconsider the limited involvement of troops and they decided to order further advances with a view to securing the Shatt-al-Hai, a canal connecting the Tigris and Euphrates river and potentially capturing Baghdad. The British government disagreed and wished to conserve forces for the Western front. The Viceroy was given permission to act as it wished, but told in no uncertain terms that no reinforcements should be expected.

The initial success experienced by the British and Indian forces quickly disintegrated in the face of Ottoman opposition. The Siege of Kut-Al-Amara began on 7th December with the besieging of an 8,000 strong British-Indian garrison in the town of Kut, 100 miles south of Baghdad, by the Ottoman Army. These campaigns produced few tactical benefits, indeed the catastrophic defeat at Kut in 1916 was a major setback. Badhdad was eventually taken in March 1917.

The conditions in Mesopotamia were dreadful. The climate, sickness and disease produced large losses in addition to battle casualties. About as many men died of disease as were killed in action. The Mesopotamia front was part of a strategy hoping for success at lower cost than the Western Front but no decisive victory was achieved.

Detail :

On the night of the 21st of November 1915 British forces, under General Townsend, undertook a forced march in order to assault Turkish positions near the town of Ctesiphon. The trench lines straddled the river and formed a position which was invisible to the British as they advanced. Townsend had spilt his forces into three columns; C Column was the first to attack, but this failed under a hail of rifle and artillery fire. A Column was also halted short of the enemy front line while B Column managed to capture the Turkish front line trenches. The battle continued for two more days before the opposing Generals decided to withdraw having inflicted heavy casualties on each others forces.

Charles Chesney was killed on the first day of the battle.

He is commemorated on the war memorial at the South East Agricultural College, Wye.

Masonic :

Initiated into Lodge Pioneer No. 1490 and joined Lodge Independence with Philanthropy No. 391, where he was passed and raised.

Source :

The project globally acknowledges the following as sources of information for research across the whole database:

• The Commonwealth War Graves Commission
• The (UK) National Archives
• Ancestry.co.uk - Genealogy, Family Trees & Family History online
• ugle.org.uk - The records of the United Grand Lodge of England including the Library and Museum of Freemasonry

Additional Source:

• Founder Researchers : Paul Masters & Mike McCarthy
• Researcher : Bruce Littley