Charles Edwin Stone

Charles Edwin Stone VC MM

After carrying an urgent message through heavy shellfire, Gunner Charles Edwin Stone could have remained behind the British lines. Instead, he picked up a rifle and voluntarily returned through a devastating German barrage to defend his comrades and the guns they refused to abandon. That extraordinary act of courage during the German Spring Offensive on 21 March 1918 earned him the Victoria Cross, Britain’s highest award for gallantry.

Charles Edwin Stone VC MM was one of the Royal Artillery’s most distinguished soldiers of the First World War. Born on 4 February 1889 at Street Lane, Ripley, near Belper, Derbyshire, England, he was the tenth of thirteen children born to George Edward and Mary Ellen Stone. Following his mother’s death in 1906, the younger members of the family were largely raised by their older brothers and sisters. Like his father, Stone became a coal miner before enlisting in the British Army at Sutton-in-Ashfield on 12 September 1914. Assigned service number 34328, he joined C Battery, 83rd Brigade, Royal Field Artillery, part of the 18th (Eastern) Division. After completing his training, he deployed to France in July 1915 and served continuously on the Western Front for the remainder of the war.

Stone’s courage was first officially recognised with the Military Medal. The award was announced in the London Gazette on 4 February 1918, identifying him as 34328 Gunner C. E. Stone, Royal Field Artillery (Sutton-in-Ashfield). As no citation accompanied the Gazette announcement, the precise action for which the Military Medal was awarded cannot be stated with certainty from the surviving official record alone. Contemporary accounts suggest it was earned during the bitter fighting around Passchendaele, where Stone repeatedly helped keep his battery’s guns in action under heavy enemy fire, but this attribution remains unconfirmed by an official citation.

Only weeks later, Stone performed the action that secured his place among Britain’s Victoria Cross recipients. On 21 March 1918, during the opening day of the German Spring Offensive at Caponne Farm, France, he remained at his gun for more than six hours while enduring intense shellfire and poison gas. Ordered to carry an urgent message to the rear, he completed the task successfully but then voluntarily returned through the barrage armed only with his rifle. Taking up a position barely one hundred yards from the advancing enemy, he engaged German infantry under heavy machine-gun fire, protecting the exposed flank of the remaining gun positions. When an enemy soldier broke through the battery’s defences, Stone pursued and killed him, preventing the position from being overrun. Later that evening he joined a small party that captured an enemy machine gun and four German prisoners. His courage, initiative and determination enabled the gun detachments to continue fighting during one of the most desperate phases of the battle, delaying the German advance and allowing the battery to withdraw in good order.

For this conspicuous gallantry, Stone was awarded the Victoria Cross. His award was announced in the London Gazette of May 1918, where he was identified as No. 34328 Gunner Charles Edwin Stone, MM, Royal Field Artillery. The official citation praised his devotion to duty, fearless initiative and unwavering courage under overwhelming enemy pressure. He later attained the rank of Bombardier before leaving the Army following the end of the war.

King George V invested Stone with the Victoria Cross at Buckingham Palace on 22 June 1918. Returning to Derbyshire, he received enthusiastic civic receptions in both Belper and Ripley, where thousands of local residents gathered to honour their hometown hero with public presentations, gifts and War Bonds. Despite the acclaim, Stone remained a quiet and modest man who never sought the limelight.

After demobilisation in 1919, Stone briefly returned to coal mining before beginning a career with Rolls-Royce in Derby, where he worked for approximately twenty years. During King George VI’s visit to the Rolls-Royce factory in 1940, Stone was introduced to the King in recognition of his distinguished wartime service. In 1949 he was again presented to royalty during a visit by the Duke of Edinburgh. Although he never married, he remained a respected figure within his community and regularly attended commemorative events honouring those who had served.

The war also brought personal tragedy. Stone’s younger brother, Sergeant Albert Ernest Stone, was killed in action on the Western Front in 1917. Family members recalled that Charles was deeply affected by his brother’s death, a loss he carried with him for the remainder of his life.

Charles Edwin Stone died in Derby on 29 August 1952, aged 63, and was buried with military honours in Belper Cemetery. His grave commemorates both his Victoria Cross and Military Medal. His medal group was later donated by his family to the Royal Artillery Museum and is now preserved within the Royal Artillery Collection. More than a century after the guns fell silent at Caponne Farm, Charles Edwin Stone remains remembered as one of the finest examples of courage and selfless devotion to duty ever displayed by a soldier of the Royal Artillery.

Sources

* The London Gazette, No. 30572, 15 March 1918 (Military Medal). * The London Gazette, No. 30663, 14 May 1918 (Victoria Cross citation). * The Register of the Victoria Cross (This England Books). * Brian Best, The VCs of the First World War: The Western Front 1918. * Charles Edwin Stone in Celebratory Mood (biographical history and contemporary accounts). * The Register of the Victoria Cross * The VCs of the First World War: The Western Front 1918