Sault Ste Marie, Ontario

Jean Longstaff has submitted the following:-

Born on 26th February 1895 to fish merchant Charles Henry Chambers and his wife of a year, Margaret Jane Wilkinson, Charles Gibbon Chambers was baptised a month later in St. Paul’s Church, West Hartlepool, as was his sister Ivy Ophelia who was born ten years later. The family initially lived in Collingwood Road, West Hartlepool, but by 1911 had moved to live in Cumberland Street, Darlington where father Henry was a driller and young Charles was an apprentice fitter.

12th May 1913 saw Margaret, Charles and young Ivy arrive in Canada on board the SS Corsican to join her husband who had arrived some time earlier in the year. The family settled in Sault Ste Marie, Ontario where both father and son found work as engineers, and Charles became a volunteer militia man with the 51st (Soo Rifles) Regiment.

On 30th June 1915 Charles, having been mobilised as a member of the militia, enlisted in the 58th Battalion Canadian Infantry at Camp Niagara, Ontario, where he became Private 452956 attached to D Company. After only six weeks he was promoted to Sergeant and in November, after a period of intense training, sailed with 58th Battalion aboard SS Saxonia from Nova Scotia to Plymouth, from where he was posted to Bramshott Camp, Hampshire.

Early in 1916 the Battalion left Southampton for France as part of the 9th Infantry Brigade, 3rd Canadian Division and mid March saw them in the trenches for the first time near Vierstraat in Belgium. The Battalion War Diary entry for 24th March states that the Battalion paraded for baths, noting that this was their first bath parade since arriving in France some four weeks earlier.

Remaining in the Ypres Salient it was here that Sergeant Chambers was killed in action on 13th June 1916. Reports give a burial grid reference and details of his burial site as “west of Lovers Walk Communications Trench, north of junction with Borders Lane, Sanctuary Wood, ¾ mile east of Zillebeke, 2 ¼ miles east southeast of Ypres”, but in 1922 IWGC stated that the grave could not be located. His name, with others is mentioned on a Memorial Cross in Perth China Wall Military Cemetery as well as on the Menin Gate.

Charles Gibbon Chambers is remembered in the Hartlepools on H115.30 and W111.86 page 8

In Canada he is remembered on their Virtual War Memorial and in their Book of Remembrance and by the Great War Veterans’ War Memorial in Sault Ste Marie, Ontario.

Canadian Book of Remembrance
Canadian Virtual War Memorial
The CWGC entry for Sergeant Chambers