PRIVATE 267543 CHARLES ALLAN EMMOTT 1/6TH BATTALION WEST RIDING REGIMENT. KILLED IN ACTION 11TH APRIL 1918 AGED 22 YEARS.


PRIVATE  267543 CHARLES ALLAN EMMOTT 1/6TH BATTALION WEST RIDING REGIMENT. KILLED IN ACTION 11TH APRIL 1918 AGED 22 YEARS.

By the middle of April 1918 the German offensive in the Somme area that had begun on the 21st March began to peter out. In response, the German High Command switched the main axis of their attack north in Belgium. The Lys Offensive as it became known was an attempt to capture the strategically important town of Ypres which had been in British hands since 1914. On the 10th April they struck towards the city using the same hurricane bombardment and infiltration tactics that had been so successful a few weeks earlier on the Somme. A weak Portuguese Division had crumpled in the face of the German onslaught and adjacent British units were unable to stem the violent attack. Soon, just as had happened on the Somme the front line began to disintegrate sending the British into headlong retreat. The 1/6th West Riding Regiment were in the front line to the south of Ypres near to the village of Nieppe when on the morning of the 11th April they were subjected to the now familiar German bombardment. As the shelling finished enemy storm troopers began to infiltrate the trenches held by the 1/6th who fought hard to hold onto their line. The fighting was savage and the battalion would lose over 130 men that day including a young Ilkley man, 22 year old Charles Allan Emmott who was killed.


One of six surviving children of carter Albert Emmott and his wife Betsy, Charles was born in 1896 at 7 Leamington Terrace, off Leeds Road. Before the war he had worked with his older brother as a mill hand and had enlisted into the army in 1915.

Originally buried near to where he fell, after the war the remains of Private Charles Allan Emmott were moved to the British Military Cemetery at Trois Arbres where they remain to this day. On his headstone his parents had inscribed from the Bible “Their Glory shall not be blotted out”, (Ecclesiasticus 44.13) He is also remembered with pride on our war memorial here in Ilkley.


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