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Charles Knight was born in Sarnia, on July 27, 1896, the son of William Russell, a barber, and Catherine Jean “Jennie” Knight.
On March 20, 1916, nineteen year-old Charles Edwin Knight enlisted in the Canadian Over-Seas Expeditionary Force in Goderich.
In the spring of 1917, the Canadian Corps made their way to an area in northern France dominated by a long hill known as Vimy Ridge. The Battle of Vimy Ridge (April 9-12, 1917) was the first time (and last time in the war) that all four divisions of the Canadian Corps, with soldiers from every region in the country, would surge forward simultaneously. Of the 97,000 Canadians who fought at Vimy Ridge, approximately 7,004 were wounded and 3,598 were killed in four days of battle. The victory at Vimy Ridge was a seminal battle, a turning point in the war for the Canadian Corps, and significant victory for Canada. Charles Knight took part in fighting and survived the Battle of Vimy Ridge in April 1917.
By mid-October 1917, he was part of the Canadian Corps that arrived in an area of Flanders, Belgium known as
Passchendaele. The Battle of Passchendaele in Belgium was waged in unceasing rain on a battlefield that was a nightmarish mess of rotting, mangled corpses, gagging gas, water-filled craters and thick mud.
Overcoming almost unimaginable hardships and horrific fighting conditions, the remarkable Canadian victory that few thought possible, came at a cost of almost 12,000 Canadian wounded and more than
4,000 Canadians killed.
On October 26, 1917, the first day of the nightmarish Battle of Passchendaele, Charles Knight was killed in
action during an attack. Another Sarnian, James Millar Pirrie, also lost his life in the same battle on the same day.
The legacy of Charles Knight lives on today with his family. The Sarnian survived the Battle of Vimy Ridge, but died in Belgium on October 26, 1917 on the first day of fighting at the brutal Battle of Passchendaele. Charles, 23, has no known grave. He was awarded the Allied Mothers Badge and the Memorial Cross which the Canadian Government presented to his mother, Catherine “Jennie”. Jennie wore the Memorial Cross for the remainder of her life, after which it was passed on to her grandson, Fred. Now, it is treasured by her great granddaughter, Jodi.
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