Page 44 - Real Rochdale Issue 20 Winter 2023

Rochdale soldier’s memoir of the

1915 Gallipoli Campaign

‘Lost Endeavour’, the remarkable memoir of a Rochdale
soldier, Private Charles Watkins, has been published,
giving readers an honest view of the Gallipoli
Campaign, a significant chapter of World War One.

Private Watkins was part of the Rochdale-based
1/6th Battalion Lancashire Fusiliers, which lost over
200 men, and suffered, according to some estimates,
between 700 and 800 wounded. They were evacuated
from Gallipoli in the early hours of 29 December 1915,
a fortnight before the final evacuation of the peninsula.

Fifty years later, Watkins wrote his memoir, a
‘hotch-potch of Gallipoli memories’.

Respected author and oral historian at the Imperial
War Museum, Peter Hart said the account “brings the
life of a private soldier at Gallipoli into sharp focus -
the unceasing danger and the terrible privations they
endured day after day, week after week and month
after month.”

‘Lost Endeavour’ is available directly from Little Gully
Publishing or via Amazon.

The second of four children, Charles Watkins
was born on 2 November 1895.

He left school at 15, working at the Turner
Brothers cotton mill before volunteering for
the Territorial Force when he was 17. War,
he said, was a “welcome escape” from hard
labour in the mill.

Watkins joined the 1/6th Battalion on 7 May
1913, and sailed for the Dardanelles in 1915.
After a short period in Egypt, the battalion
was sent to the Western Front, but Watkins
remained behind in Egypt, where he entered
the Royal Flying Corps, which he described as
“the most enjoyable time of the war.”

After the war, Watkins married and had four
children. He died on 5 January 1989, aged 93.
Photo: Little Gully Publishing

REAL ROCHDALE - WINTER 2023 44 45 REAL ROCHDALE - WINTER 2023