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Pte. Charles Reuben Clements
British Army 24th (Sportsmans) Btn. Royal Fusiliers
My maternal grandfather Charles Clements, of London, enlisted in the 24th (2nd Sportsman's) Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers on 4th of June 1915, and was given the regimental number 3526. It is evident from Army Form 172B, a copy of which I have in my possession, that he lied about his age when he signed up, claiming to be 22, when he was only 18 or 19. Also, that he was 5'6" tall, and weighed 130lbs (9st4lbs). He went on to serve on the Western Front for three years, fighting in the Battles of the Somme, the Ancre, Arras and Cambrai, among others, before being seriously wounded by shrapnel in the left arm (elbow) and leg (thigh, knee and ankle) on 12th of September 1918, and repatriated to the U.K. on 15th September, spending the remaining two months of the war in hospital. Judging from the regimental war records in The Royal Fusiliers in the Great War by H.C. O'Neill, it is most likely that he incurred his injuries during the 2nd Division's attack on Moeuvres, on the Siegfried Line, which was part of the larger Hundred Days Offensive that finally won the war. After the war, he returned to his job as a gentleman's outfitter in London, and died there in 1958.
