SERJEANT CHARLES CASIO LAWRENCE MM
RIFLE BRIGADE
12TH OCTOBER 1917 AGE 21
BURIED: HOOGE CRATER CEMETERY, BELGIUM
Yesterday's casualty, the former butcher Private John Ernest Orr of the 28th Battalion Australian Infantry, died "to save the Empire's name". Today's, Serjeant Charles Casio Lawrence, the son of a London road mender, died "to save England's name".
Serjeant Lawrence served with the 7th Battalion the Rifle Brigade, which was raised in Winchester in August 1914, qualifying its members to be counted among Kitchener's first one hundred thousand volunteers. The battalion crossed to France in May 1915 and was heavily involved in the action at Hooge Crater on 30 July 1915 when the Germans used flame throwers for the first time.
Lawrence survived this, was awarded a military medal for an action at an unspecified date, and then was killed in action on 12 October 1917 on the first day of the First Battle of Passchendaele when the Second Army tried to take the strategically important Passchendaele Ridge.
His mother chose his inscription - an impressively patriotic sentiment for someone who must have been an impressive young man to have reached the rank of serjeant by the time he was 21.