Charles Percival Haythorn Sylvester (known as Val) was born in Kidsgrove, North Staffordshire on July 14th 1896. His father (also Charles) was then working in his sister’s drapery business and his mother was a former governess. Her brother (another Charles) was a sergeant major in the Yeomanry and had a big influence on the family. Val’s father was the younger brother of Walter Sylvester, who invented the Sylvester Pit Prop, which saved many lives in the mining industry. 

When Val was young the family moved around quite a lot. His brother Alan, was born in Manchester in 1901 and his sister Betty was born in Wolstanton in 1905. In 1907 Val was at the village school in Astbury, where the family lived in a thatched cottage opposite the church, before moving again to Stanley Moor, near Bagnall, where the family stayed till 1921. In 1921 they built a house in Light Oaks, which became the family home until 2018.

 Val was a bright child, who loved drawing and was always carrying around his pencils and paper. He and Alan both loved the outdoors and became two of the earliest scouts in Baden Powell’s new movement. Their uncle in the Yeomanry sent them an old bell tent to camp in, which Betty enjoyed as well. 

By 1911, Val had already left school and was studying art, gaining a first class certificate for freehand drawing, and working at Royal Doulton’s as a painter. A letter sent by Val in 1913 tells of an art course in London, where he was very frustrated by not being able to access the Royal Academy of Art due to a Suffragette Protest. He was thrilled to see the sights and this visit broadened his horizons, preparing him a little for a life away from the family. 

On 8.1.1915 Val joined the 1/5 th North Staffordshire battalion (part of a territorial brigade) alongside many others from Stone, and each of the six  pottery towns to the west of Stoke. After basic training he was sent as a Lance Corporal to Alderney for three months, for further training and also to assist in defending the island. He wrote many letters home, which we as a family still have. His letters to his sister Betty, who was now 10, were very caring. She insisted he wrote part of the letter in French, which he did, and she replied with a little French as well. He also sent her a sketch of kittens and always asked after her pets. To his brother Alan, then 15, he was more open, telling him to look for an apprenticeship and not to join up voluntarily when he left school, and saying he had already seen and done things he never expected to do, and yet not knowing how much more there was to come.  Other letters talked about how he missed their camping trips together. 

After further training in Darlington on 25.8.1915 he joined his brigade just south of Ypres, with more training in trench warfare and acclimatising to the almost ritually timed German bombardments and later experiencing several poison gas scares. 

 He wrote he felt so sorry for the Belgian children who couldn’t go to school, although most had already been evacuated to safer areas in France.  

The brigade was then sent to hold up the line in Flanders, a mining area, not dissimilar to North Staffordshire, and where the British launched the battle of Loos at the end of September, with the battalion participating in the attack of Hohenzollern Redoubt. The 1/5th North Staffs were first in the attack. Val, as all the others, was carrying 3 days rations, 220 rounds of ammunition, 3 empty sandbags, 2 smoke helmets and a greatcoat. Progress was very difficult and the casualties were extremely heavy.  The 1/5th North Staffs alone lost 50% of their Battalion, which meant 20 officers and 485 others, including their Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Colonel Knight, were killed in the failed attack. What an introduction to active service for Val. 

In November, they went back to Loos and Dec 21st 1915 found Val back in the trenches for Christmas. The weather was awful, raining heavily and he wrote that a diving suit would be useful as the trenches were flooded so deeply.  

In July 1916 the brigade was part of the diversionary attack at Gommecourt and then were in the trenches for the Battle of the Somme, throughout July. Here, Val had several narrow escapes. He usually wrote comforting letters to his mother but this one dated July 31st said “It is like Dante’s Inferno here, with a continuing roar of guns and bursting shells. The stench is awful, and my haversack was blown to smithereens. Another shell burst my canteen of tea and I was blown down the trench, luckily only receiving bruises, Thank God “.

Like everyone else, Val hated the rainy conditions, the mud in the trenches and was exhausted by the stress of going back and forth to the front line. He suffered from rheumatism and on November 23rd 1916 he was admitted to hospital in Southampton for three weeks. It was a time of respite, with sports and entertainment and fairly quickly he recovered the use of his fingers, and reported he could almost play billiards again. 

His mother had always wanted him to be a commissioned officer, and she had petitioned many people at the beginning of the war, with her brother having to tell her sternly that as Val hadn’t had a public school education, this would not be possible. However, in 1917, he heard his application for training as an officer had been accepted. For several months, while he waited,  he was sent to Wallsend on Tyne, which included a staff job as a telephonist at headquarters, and preparing soldiers for a return to France. 

On July 7th 1917 he joined the no 13 Officers Cadet Battalion at Newmarket and passed his exams in early December. 

 This meant he could rejoin the 1/6th South Staffordshire Regiment as a 2nd Lieutenant at the beginning of 1918 which also saw his younger brother Alan, who had now also joined the 2nd Warwickshire regiment, training to be a gunner. 

In August 1918 Val came home briefly. The family picked the first apples of their tree for him to take as he returned to France to go back to his regiment. He reported that the crossing to France was horrendous as a storm was blowing and it rained for days on end, as he travelled across towards St Quentin. He rejoined the regiment for the successful battle of Riqueval bridge at St Quentin Canal on 29th September to October 1st. We think we identified him on the huge celebratory photograph that was taken after the Germans retreated. 

Two days later on October 3, 1918, Val was blown up, as he went forward with others, at the beginning of the Battle of the Beaurevoir line. Two other junior officers from his regiment were also killed that day. 

The family have several letters from his last few days and some poignantly written on the day he died. His mother ‘s letter asked if he had eaten all the apples and Betty, his sister, wrote of harvesting their home-grown turnips. The letters were later sent back with the words Killed in Action scrawled across the envelope. The family was informed of his death on Oct 8th, followed by a second telegram from Buckingham Palace offering their condolences ten days later. His mother wrote many letters to the War office begging them to tell her where he was buried, and for the return of his personal belongings. She couldn’t accept that there wasn’t a body and that his belongings couldn’t be retrieved from the battle ground. 

His mother was totally broken by his death. After the Armistice other letters unsuccessfully pleaded with the War Office for Alan to be demobbed, and he served with his unit in post war Germany until October 1919.  Later Val’s death was recorded on a Commonwealth grave stone, with his name written on the memorial at Vis-en-Artois British Cemetery at Haucourt near Arras, and also on the Kilngate memorial at Royal Doulton, and a service of commemoration at Bagnall Village Church. 

In October 1999, 81 years after Val’s death, his niece, Valerie and her husband, Philip Whittaker, a former Royal Doulton director, alongside their oldest  daughter Jan (one of Val’s great nieces) and her husband John, went to visit the British Cemetery at Vis-en-Atois. We placed a wreath of poppies, said prayers and read out a few of Wilfred Owen’s poems, who had died himself on the 4th of November, a week before the Armistice. We then remembered all those from Staffordshire, who had died so near the Armistice and in the war since 1914. The next day we visited the Riqueval bridge and as my mother had detailed information of the route taken by the regiment, after the victory of St Quentin, we trod in their steps, till we found the field where he had died. It was a windy day, with drizzly rain, which seemed appropriate, for the solemn remembrance at that place. 

Going back to that November 11 morning, 1918 when the Armistice was announced, Val’s mother, Alice Sylvester wrote: “It was such a lovely morning I thought I would go into the garden. I was pulling up old parsley stalks when all the blowers in the Potteries started off. My heart gave a great bound: Peace is proclaimed and then I burst into tears.  I felt as if my heart would break. To think that my dear lad Val had gone through nearly all the war and then be killed only one month before victory, it was too cruel.  I don't know why God has done it, perhaps I shall know some day.”

That day was doubly cruel for Alice Sylvester as she had lost her elder son and her younger son, Alan Sylvester, could not be with her. He wrote to her from Stowmarket, Suffolk on Oct 31st where he was in military training.

My Dear Mother,

I am sorry to say I shall not be able to come home next week, so do not expect me for a while. All passes have been stopped owing to the flu. There have been a lot of deaths in the battalion so you can tell it has been very bad.  I was working with a corporal last week in Henham, Essex. He got flu and was sent to hospital. Three days later he was dead. All shops, public houses and the canteen are shut so we cannot get any extras, only cigarettes and matches – and you cannot eat those. I am very glad we have left Henham, it is a very great wonder that I am not in hospital with a very serious cold for I have had a job to keep going this last two weeks. If you only knew how we roughed it the last two weeks, the tents were flooded, the blankets and our own clothes wet through. About 50 of the lads are in hospital. 

I think we are going to do some more Lewis Gun firing, so we shall see a bit more of Bedford.

I hope you are keeping well for it is what I worry about.   I expect you are all not very grand so cheerio. Love to all. I remain your loving son, Alan.

PS I had a very nice letter from Auntie Emmie.

Alice concludes her letter: “I could not stay in the house. Neighbour Ivy came over, we cried together but no one can comfort me. O my son, to think you should not share in the victory you had worked so hard for. Flags are flying in North Staffordshire and guns are firing. But I am alone and have no rejoicing, my boy Val sleeps in France.”

Sources 

England and Wales Civil Registration birth index 1837-1915

Personal letters from Val to his mother, brother and sister and copies of their replies to him. 

Letters of condolence from relatives and friends, replies from the War Office and telegram from Buckingham Palace.

Death Cert. T Lt South Staffs Regiment Vol 16 pg. 114 Oct 3rd 1918

CPH Sylvester’s war records: The National Archives of the UK(TNA) WO374 index, Kew, Surrey, England

Ancestry 1901 census 

Ancestry 1911 census 

Steve Booth; Staffordshire Soldiers and the Western Front (to Oct 1915)

Vis-en-Artois Memorial, Panels 6 and 7, Harcourt, Nr Arras, France 

Ancestry input by Valerie Sylvester, Neice of C.P.H. (Val) Sylvester