Genealogical war memorials of Bournemouth’s fallen
La Bassee: October 13th, 1914
Introduction
Tales from the Front (11) tells the story of Charles George Morris, a Bournemouth native who fought in the Great War. A Private serving with the 1st Battalion of the Dorsetshire Regiment, he fell on October 13th, 1914, at La Bassee. The battalion had incurred substantial losses on the 12th. The same happened twenty-four hours later, Morris, with two other Bournemouth natives, falling on a bad day for the Regiment.
Tales from the Front (11): Part 1
Pour encourager les autres
On September 8th, during the retreat from Mons, the British Army carried out the execution of Private Thomas Highgate for desertion. Soldiers from B Company, 1st Dorsets, together with men from another battalion, stood under orders as witnesses. British Expeditionary Force High Command viewed the execution as a means of reinforcing discipline during a period of severe operational strain, though responses among the ranks perhaps varied. Veteran soldiers such as Morris, who had completed several years of service with the 2nd Dorsets in India and drew upon a military family background, recognised the functional necessity of order: unreliability under fire endangered collective survival. For such men, discipline required no symbolic demonstration. Other rankers and non‑commissioned officers, however, may have interpreted the episode as an insensitive and coercive assertion of authority. In the fighting around La Bassée, constant artillery fire, snipers, and sudden death already imposed relentless pressures that left little need for institutional reminders of discipline.
Tales from the Front (11): Part 2
On the move
Morris’s father, as a young man, may have suffered wounds in his military service. A decade after serving as a gunner, he described himself as an army pensioner. Thereafter, he followed the mobile career of a rural farmworker, moving around the countryside for employment. The birthplaces of his children reveal his nomadic pattern: Wallisdown, Ansty, Kinson, and Parkstone. They settled in the latter by 1885. Morris’s maternal grandfather made his living as a tranter, a commercial traveller, selling goods from his cart. Thus, she had also travelled much during her early life. Despite these travels and settling in Bournemouth, Morris’s parents appear to have maintained close relationships with their respective kinship groups. In both 1891 and 1901, family relatives resided with them. This pattern would continue after the war. Morris’s mother died in 1910. A widowed housekeeper kept his father’s household in 1911, but the next year, these two married.
Close kinship ties
When a teenager, Morris worked on a farm in Pamphill, near Wimborne. Here, he drove a cart, perhaps for the same farm where his father worked. In 1904, at the age of 19, he enlisted with the Dorsetshire regiment. The 1911 census shows him serving with the Regiment’s Second Battalion, then stationed in Poona, India. Morris worked as a cook. By the next year, he had mustered out, for he had returned to England, where, once again, he found work as a farm carter. This farm lay near Taunton, Somerset. The same year, he married the daughter of a local gamekeeper. In October 1914, he fell in the constant, close fighting near La Bassee, Flanders. Morris’s marriage reflected the tight kinship bonds that connected his family. Analysis shows that he married his cousin, the daughter of his father’s sister. She had married a Blandford man, a sometime gamekeeper.
Tales from the Front (11): Part 3
The sad day
The press reports filed by correspondent Atherton-Fleming distilled information taken from infantrymen. He gave an account of bayonet charges occurring near La Bassee. His report may cover the 1st Dorsets actions. The bayonet charges aimed to clear out the German trenches. A corporal described the process of ‘getting into them’. ‘And get into them they did – right into them with the bayonet – slap over a ploughed field and two ditches with a yell that would have woken the fear of death in the heart of the most stoical.’ The account continued: ‘Our men were in the last German trench, which was supposed to be covered by rifle and shell fire from the village. But this mattered not, and, to use the expression of the same corporal, “We dug ‘em out same as you dig bully beef out of a can”.’ This may provide a terrifying flavour of Morris’s last day.
Aftermath
Ada, Morris’s widow and cousin, continued to live in Somerset. One of her sisters-in-law (and, also, a cousin) shared the household in 1921. No children seem to have come from the marriage. Her residence with her cousin, also connected by marriage, indicates the kinship links which tied together the family. Of his siblings, all sisters, one went into service, one married a woodman, another a baker, and another died at the end of her teens.
The Dorsets continued to defend, if not advance through, the area around Givenchy. ‘Hostile attacks were frequently made and always expected.’ Enemy artillery attacked every day. The men found the situation ‘unhealthy’. Three companies, decimated by casualties, merged into one. Rumours flew around the ranks: impending attacks, withdrawals. Three sergeants received commissions as officers. October 22nd became an ‘anxious day’. On November 1st, they helped to defend Messine, when another Bournemouth native would fall.
Takeaway
Tales from the Front (11) has explored the life, world, and military service of Charles George Morris (1885-1914). A farm carter who had served in India with the Dorsets, he returned to England before the war. He resumed his civilian work, got married, and perhaps contemplated a stable future. Soon, however, he answered the call issued during August 1914. He marched once again, now in the ranks of the regiment’s first battalion. If he had gone to France at the beginning, he would have survived fierce fighting. In October, however, the charnel house at La Bassee claimed him and other Bournemouth natives.
‘Tales from the Front’
A collection of personal stories honouring the Bournemouth natives who gave their lives on the battlefield and the regiments with which they served. Blending social and military history with genealogical insight, it explores their roots, families, occupations, and the ultimate sacrifices they made for their country.
Set against the backdrop of regimental war diaries and enriched by period media accounts, the series offers a powerful and intimate portrait of Bournemouth’s wartime heroes — a mosaic of personal courage within the broader sweep of history.
Serving as a companion and continuation of Victorian Bournemouth, Tales from the Front forms part of News from the Past: History for the Rest of Us.
References
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