Charles Urban Mantle

Corporal Charles Urban Mantle – Royal Defence Corps

Corporal Charles Urban Mantle served with the Royal Defence Corps during the First World War. He died on 25^th June 1918 at the 7^th Eastern General Hospital, Cambridge, and was later buried at Danygraig Cemetery, Swansea. The headstone at his grave also bears the inscription of his father, David T. Jones, who had died just a month earlier, marking a double bereavement for the family.

Early Life

1901 Census

The only census record that provides information about Charles is the 1901 Census, when he was residing with his uncle, Joseph Rooke, at 133 Campbell Road, Coleford. The details of his wider family life remain limited, though the later inscription on his headstone confirms his connection to David T. Jones.

Burial

Charles Urban Mantle
Danygraig Cemetery
credit - findagrave

Following his death in June 1918, Charles was buried at Danygraig Cemetery. His funeral reflected both the solemnity of military loss and the closeness of family grief, with his father’s recent death emphasised on the headstone inscription.

Charles had died at the 7^th Eastern General Hospital, Cambridge, one of the major wartime hospitals established in the city. The hospital had been set up at the outbreak of the war in 1914, using Cambridge University buildings such as lecture halls and residential spaces to accommodate hundreds of beds for wounded and ill servicemen. Over the course of the conflict, the facility treated thousands of men, many of whom had been brought back from the Western Front. Despite the hospital’s significant role in recovery and rehabilitation, not all survived the injuries and illnesses they carried from the war, and Charles was among those whose service ended there.

Legacy

Corporal Charles Urban Mantle’s story highlights the role of the Royal Defence Corps, a unit often overlooked in the wider history of the First World War. The Corps was responsible for guarding key sites, prisoners of war, and vulnerable points across Britain, freeing younger men for front-line service. While Charles did not fall in battle abroad, his death reminds us that the strain of service extended beyond the trenches and battlefields of France and Belgium.

His headstone at Danygraig Cemetery, inscribed with both his name and that of his father, stands as a double memorial to family loss. For Swansea, it reflects the layered impact of the war, where military sacrifice and private grief often became inseparable.