PRITCHARD Charles Henry
Australians have always answered the call to arms when needed. The first world war was one of those times and this is the story of just one of those men:
Submitted by Stephen Bowes, Katanning
Remembering a Katanning man, who died in service one hundred years ago.
Charles Pritchard was single and farmed at Katanning. When E. Campbell Pope performed his medical in Katanning on 11/3/1916, he recorded a man of 34 years, five feet four and a half inches tall, weighing 120 pounds, with pale complexion, green eyes and dark hair.
Charles reported previous military service with The King’s Royal Rifles of three years and nine months. He departed Fremantle on 7 August, 1916 aboard His Majesty’s Australian Transport Miltiades A28 with the 19th Reinforcements, 16th Battalion, and arrived in Plymouth towards the end of September.
Reported missing on April 11, 1917, he was discovered to be a prisoner of war in Langensalza POW Camp, Germany, when he wrote to his sister, Mrs Annie Welch of Battersea, London: “I am alright it is a hard life to be a prisoner, but I am out of it now.”
Private Pritchard suffered from dropsy while serving, and again as a POW. While in hospital, he wrote again to Annie, a letter in which he expressed despondency and some bitterness that his family in England had not written in answer to his many letters, nor had he received any Red Cross parcels. He was treated by his captors for his illness and appeared to be recovering. However, he relapsed and died on September 9, 1917.
He is buried in the Prisoner-of-War Cemetery at Niederzwehren Cemetery in Germany.
Niederzwehren Cemetery
Charles Henry Pritchard
Casualty List Entry
War Graves Registration (Schedule 113c)
War Graves Registration (Schedule 112c)
RSL Virtual War Memorial
About Niederzwehren Cemetery