Charles Richard Hooker

Charles Richard Hooker was born in Hambledon in 1879, the son of Richard and Ellen Hooker of West Street. He grew up in the village in a working family and, like many local men, found employment as a general labourer. In 1907 he married Annie Louisa Biggs and they made their home in West Street where they raised two young children, Winifred and Harold.

When war came he enlisted in the Hampshire Regiment and joined the 10th Battalion, one of the units formed for service overseas with the New Army. In 1915 the battalion was sent to the eastern Mediterranean to take part in the Gallipoli campaign, an attempt by Allied forces to force the Dardanelles and knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war.

The conditions on the Gallipoli peninsula were severe. The landings were made against well-prepared defences and the men fought from exposed trenches cut into dry, rocky ground under constant rifle and artillery fire. Heat, flies and lack of water in summer added to the hardship, and casualties were heavy even when no major attack was taking place.

Charles Richard Hooker was killed on 10th August 1915 at the age of thirty five. His body was never recovered and he is commemorated on the Helles Memorial, which records those who died in the campaign and have no known grave.

His death came during a period of repeated loss for Hambledon. Within days other men from the same community were also killed in the Gallipoli fighting – John Searle on 6th August, Ephraim Hughes on 9th August, and Richard Lacey of the same battalion on 11th August. For the village these telegrams would have arrived in quick succession, marking the Suvla and August offensive as one of the heaviest blows suffered by the parish during the war.

Charles left a widow and two young children. He is remembered on the Hambledon War Memorial and among the many names of the missing at Helles, where those who fell in the Gallipoli campaign are commemorated overlooking the sea where they fought.