Captain John James Percival Charles, RAMC
On this day
in 1917 Captain John James Percival Charles of the Royal Army Medical Corps
died of wounded received during the Battle of Passchendaele (the 3rd
Battle of Ypres).
Captain
Charles was born in Cork in 1884 the son Prof John James Charles who was
Professor of Anatomy at Queens College Cork (now UCC). Captain Charles studied
medicine at his father’s College, before going to the University of Edinburgh
to take his medical degree in 1909. Following graduation Charles work in London
and Norwich, before joining the RAMC on the outbreak of war in August 1914.
Captain
Charles had served in Flanders since 1914. He had been twice wounded, and
mentioned in dispatches, before receiving his fatal wound on 31st
July 1917, the first day of the Battle of Passchendaele. Captain Charles was ‘dressing
cases on the field under heavy fire … when a sniper shot him, inflicting a
wound from which he died after much suffering nine weeks later’. He was buried in the Boulogne Eastern Cemetery.
The Colonel
of his regiment was killed next to Captain Charles on the battlefield, and it
was the army chaplain who wrote to his family; ‘He was doing magnificent work,
dressing cases on the battlefield, with absolute disregard to his own safety,
under heavy fire, when a sniper shot him. We were all very fond of him in the
battalion’.
Captain Charles was awarded the Military Cross for his bravery on the first day of the Battle of Passchendaele, but died before the award was made.
 |
| Boulogne Eastern Cemetery |
Sources
‘Charles,
John James Percival’, Kirkpatrick Index, RCPI
Casey,
Cullen & Duignan, Irish Doctors in the First World War (2015)