Charles Kraft

Calgary Herald April 1917

Jean Longstaff has submitted the following:-

Charles Kraft was the grandson of a German pork butcher, who had arrived in Sunderland as a sailor and stayed and raised his family there. His father, also named Charles, married local girl Annie May Glendenning when he was only nineteen and they went on to have six children. Born in Sunderland on 18th September 1897 Charles was the second oldest of his siblings Ernest, Louisa, Annie May, Mary and James. In 1910 father Charles emigrated to Canada and was followed by Annie and the children at various times over the next two years.

Eventually the family was all together and living in Calgary where father Charles had found work as a machinist. When young Charles enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force in Calgary on 14th October 1915 he gave his occupation as saddler for the firm Riley and McCormick in Calgary and named his father as his next of kin. Private 160397 was attached to the 82nd Battalion which embarked for Britain on 20th May 1916 under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel W.A. Lowry, and shortly after their arrival at the camp near Salisbury Plain the men of the battalion were absorbed into the 9th Reserve Battalion and moved to camp at Shorncliffe, Kent.

Drafted into the 10th Battalion in September 1916 Charles joined them in billets near Albert, and a week later had his first taste of the trenches when they relieved the 8th Battalion on the front line near Courcelette. Christmas and New Year saw the battalion in Corps Reserve at Divion where they enjoyed concerts and sports and then three weeks training before moving back into the front line trenches at the end of January when they relieved 7th Battalion near Angres. In the middle of February Private 160397 was awarded eight days field punishment for being absent from a working party.

April 1917 saw the Battalion on the front line in the fighting at Vimy Ridge and the Circumstances of Casualty report for Charles Kraft reads “he was instantly killed by enemy shell fire in No Man’s Land near 500 Crater at about 3.30am on 9th April”. Private Kraft was just 19 years old.

Charles Kraft is remembered in Sunderland on S140.048 part 9 page 201

He is also remembered in Canada on their Virtual War Memorial and in their Book of Remembrance, and on the Calgary Soldiers’ Memorial.

Canadian Book of Remembrance
Canadian Virtual War Memorial
The CWGC entry for Private Kraft