Charles Pelham West

He was born in the East India Dock Road, Limehouse, London in 1913. A month after his birth his mother died and soon afterwards he and his sister were abandoned by their father and were left to be brought up by a foster mother, Mrs Flower, who was the landlady of the house where the West family were lodging. His sister died in 1926.

On leaving school he became an apprentice chemist/pharmacist at Boots but later joined the medical publishers Bailliare, Tindall & Cox.

He met his future wife, Ethel Henrietta Faulkner, at St Anne's, Limehouse youth club and they were married in 1935. They lived initially in Limehouse but later moved to Kingsbury, N W London.

When war broke out he worked for the police war reserve and then in 1940 enlisted in the Northamptonshire Regiment. He served in North Africa and later in Burma, as part of the Fourteenth Army. For his actions in Burma he was awarded the British Empire Medal (London Gazette June 1946). He left the army in December 1945 at the rank of Warrant Officer II but could not find work so he re-applied to join the Army and was accepted in July 1946. He served 4 more years in clerical positions before finally leaving the Army in January 1951.

He worked as a clerk at West Middlesex Hospital, then as Vice-Superintendent of Redhill House, Burnt Oak (a home for the elderly) and finally as a Local Government Officer for Brent Council. During this period the family was living in Greenford, Northolt, Kingsbury and Wembley.

He retained a strong interest in the armed services. He was a member of the Burma Star Association and attended the annual reunion of the Northamptonshire Regiment each Remembrance Sunday.

He retired in 1977 and later moved to Scratby, nr Great Yarmouth, where he lived until he died in 1984. He is buried in Ormsby St Margaret.

 

 

Sharing a joke with Viscount Montgomery - Charles West is on extreme right.