Charles Hayden, known as Charlie, was born in Haddenham, Cambridgeshire on 30th November 1897, one of 11 children of Smith Hayden & his wife Mary Ann Whitehead, 9 of whom were still living in 1911. By this time the family was living in Aldreth, probably somewhere near the top of the High Street. Charlie is shown in the census aged 13, and a farm labourer like his father and elder brother George.

When he was admitted to the Arkenstall Boys’ School in November 1904 it is noted that he had previously attended Aldreth School. The only reference to him in the Aldreth log book was in February 1901, when he was absent from school for two weeks, apparently due to bad roads. He was aged 3 at the time and living at Bury Fen, with the weather described as ‘inclement’, while other children were absent as they had gone skating.

His service record was one of those lost in WW2, so all the information we have for his military career is from the records of his death on 4th November 1918, when he was killed in action on the Western Front, probably in France, and his Medal Card, showing that he was (posthumously) awarded the British War Medal and the Victory Medal.

These records show that he had joined the 6th Battalion of the Northamptonshire Regiment, which had embarked for France in July 1915, although it is unlikely that Charles was with them at that time as he was not awarded the 1914/15 Cross, awarded to all those who served in an active theatre of war before the end of 1915.

He is buried at Preux-au-Bois Communal Cemetery in the Pas de Calais, in a village captured on the 4th November 1918, after a severe struggle by units of the 18th Division supported by tanks. It is almost certain that this is the action in which he was killed.

He was perhaps the unluckiest of our Haddenham men, dying only a week before the Armistice.

Rosemary Gorman