Flashback to November 2004: Remembering a brave soldier from Madeley

On a visit to the Commonwealth War Grave Cemetery in Stahnsdorf, near Berlin, she laid a wreath on one of the graves, and one grave only, that of Major Charles Yate, who was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for his bravery in the opening days of the conflict in 1914.

That visit came just a few days before Remembrance Day in 2004 when then, as now, Britain remembered the sacrifices of those heroes who fought and never returned home to their loved ones.

Yate's courageous deeds had been all but forgotten because he had no children and few family members left when he died. But thanks to the efforts of the Madeley Local Studies Group his story had been brought to wider public attention.

Yate hailed from a Madeley family and the account which had been written in history was that he was seriously injured fighting a desperate rearguard action at Le Cateau in August 1914 and subsequently died of his wounds.

This was a straightforward version of his final heroic moments which led to the award of the Victoria Cross.

According to the citation he "commanded one of the two Companies that remained to the end in the trenches at Le Cateau on August 26 and, when all other officers were killed or wounded and ammunition exhausted, led his 19 survivors against the enemy in a charge in which he was severely wounded. He was picked up by the enemy and has subsequently died as a prisoner of war."

But it was a version which has proven to be misleading, disguising an even more remarkable, and no less heroic, truth about how Yate met his death.

Major Charles Allix Lavington Yate – or "Cal" Yate, from his initials – was the son of a vicar of Madeley, but research by historian Shelagh Hampton strongly pointed to him being born in Germany, his mother being German, and he was a fluent German speaker.

He had narrowly escaped death in two previous conflicts. He was seriously wounded at the Battle of Graspan in the Boer War in 1899, and later was specially chosen to report on the military tactics of the Japanese during the war between Russia and Japan. At Port Arthur a shell burst close by, killing the officer standing near him.

Yate was decorated for his service by the Emperor of Japan, and there has been speculation that the Japanese "death before dishonour" approach to capture might have been relevant to the manner of his own death.

In the Great War he was serving in the 2nd Battalion of the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, and the war diary detailing the climatic moments at Le Cateau reads: “At about 4.20pm the final rush came. In ‘B’ Company, Major Yate gave the order to meet it with a charge, but the number of men near him able to support it was so small that his desperate call met with practically no response. Major Yate himself, with other officers of his Company, was overpowered and disarmed..."

A photograph exists which shows a haunted-looking and apparently unwounded Yate surrounded by his captors.

Modern research in Major Yate’s file in the National Archives by Shelagh of the Madeley Living History Project uncovered what happened next.

He ended up in a German prisoner-of-war camp, but was clearly determined to escape, but having done so was rumbled and set upon by hostile German civilians on their way to work at a local factory. To avoid recapture, he slit his throat with a cut-throat razor. Shelagh did not give credence to the idea that the German statements about his death might be a cover-up for murder by a mob.

Death came on September 20, 1914.

Even at the time the rumours swirled, with one Sergeant from the battalion writing a few weeks later: "I am told that Major C.A.L. Yate has been shot while trying to escape.”

Yate was honoured with the installation of a new paving stone in front of Madeley war memorial at a ceremony attended by civic dignitaries and guests on August 26, 2016, to coincide with the anniversary of the battle at which he won his VC.

The paving stone was part of a national scheme to honour the VC heroes of the Great War.