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Hi!

Started by SommeGirl, October 09, 2012, 11:38:47 AM

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SommeGirl

Hi,

I'm new here... I'm heavily into WW1, especially the Somme region.

I'm looking around for any information and pictures of Captain Charles May who served with the Manchester's and sadly died on the first day of the Somme offensive. I'm also browsing around for information and ideas to assist me with a short animation I am working on based on a young soldier in the trenches which I am hoping to have completed for the 100 year anniversary of the start of the First World War.

Many thanks

Ruth

Robert Bonner

Ruth.
Welcome to the forum. We will try and help.
A photograph and details of Captain May are contained in the recent published history of the 22nd Battalion Manchester Regiment by Alastair Cowan.  You will be able to buy a copy from the museum if you go on to their website and look up publications.
Robert

Wendi

Hi Ruth and a Warm Welcome to our Forum.  (nice to have more girlies around  :) )

http://www.tameside.gov.uk/museumsgalleries/mom is the link to the Museum's website.

Wendi
"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it!  No matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and with your own common sense" ~ Buddha

tonyrod

#3
hi ruth, welcome to the forum, and enjoy your stay,  lots of hits on  google for captain Charles  c May, just something to get you started, tonyrod,  ;D

Last words from the Somme - This Britain - UK - The Independent
www.independent.co.uk/.../last-words-from-the-somme-480743.html

Charles May, Captain

Captain Charles "Charlie" May, 27, thinking of his wife, Bessie, and baby daughter, showed none of his comrades' enthusiasm to go into battle.

A member of the 22nd Battalion, The Manchester Regiment, 7th Division, he wrote to his wife on 17 June, a fortnight before the bloody first day of battle of the Somme: "I do not want to die. Not that I mind for myself. If it be that I am to go, I am ready. But the thought that I may never see you or our darling baby again turns my bowels to water. I cannot think of it with even the semblance of equanimity."

Over the months his attitude changed to resigned fatalism. May's final diary entry at 5.45am on 1 July, reproduced from Malcolm Brown's history of the Somme, was among the last testaments to be written by the 19,240 Britons who would die on the Somme that day. "No Man's land is a tangled desert," he wrote. "We do not yet seem to have stopped his machine guns. These are popping off all along our parapet as I write. I trust they will not claim too many of our lads before the day is over."

Suspecting he might not return, he asked his friend, Captain FJ Earles, if he would look after his wife and daughter. May led his men over the top at 7.30am that day. The 22nd Manchesters made progress across No Man's Land, but the machine guns he wrote of cut down many of the battalion - and May was among the dead. Earles kept his promise, and later married May's widow.

google.
The Quick and the Dead: Fallen Soldiers and Their Families in the ... - Page 86 - Google Books Result
books.google.co.uk/books?isbn=1408824566                           and page 111

harribobs

wasn't Charlie May featured in the TV docudrama 'The Somme' ?
"It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply
  to serve as a warning to others."

Robert Bonner

Chris.
Correct - based almost entirely on material suplied by the regimental archives in Ashton.
Robert