In Memory of

Private Charles Zorn

19154
6th Battalion South Lancashire Regiment
Killed In Action 9th April 1916

Private Charles J. Zorn was born in Manchester according to SDGW. He was married with three children and lived in Hotel Street, Earlestown. He worked at Collins Green Colliery, and had in earlier days been a sailor.

There is no record of Charles' age, but Ian Plimmer has found the following information on the 1881 census:

Charles ZORN Head Married Male Age 29 Birthplace Germany Butcher: 23, Thomas Street, Birkenhead.
Annie ZORN Wife Married Female Age 20 Birthplace Liverpool, Lancashire, England
Charles J. ZORN Son Male Age 2 m(onths?) Birthplace Birkenhead, Cheshire, England

There is no way of knowing if this is the Charles J. Zorn on the memorial, but if it is it would make him about 35 at his death.

He enlisted in May 1915 and, according to the obituary published in the Newton and Earlestown Guardian on May 5th 1915, after a few weeks training was drafted to Suvla Bay in Gallipoli. From there he was sent to Egypt, and finally to the Persian Gulf, where he was attached to the force that was attempting to relieve Townshend at Kut.

Like Albert Taylor and Alfred Hughes, Charles’s name is on the Basra Memorial in Iraq which bears the name of more than forty thousand members of the Commonwealth forces who died in the operations in Mesopotamia from the autumn of 1914 to the end of August 1921 and whose graves are not known.

The handwritten Battalion War Diary gives an account of the fighting on the day Charles was killed. Whalley-Kelly in “Ich Dien” gives an account of the background to the fighting. The description of the attack was based partly on the battalion diary.