From a very early age I have been aware of what happened on the Gallipoli peninsula in 1915 as a regular feature of visits to my paternal grandparents was being allowed to read the books in their collection of the Harmsworth World War 1 Illustrated.

I learned my mother’s elder brother had died during the campaign but I was not told how or where he died.

Many years later I traced him through the Imperial War Graves Commission website, where I was able to flesh out the details of what had happened to him.

His photograph shows what was plainly a pleasant young man, who would have been a joy to know.

Charles Pratt Johnson was born in 1894 and enlisted as a private soldier in the Manchester Regiment’s 1st/5th Battalion (Service Number 1491), which landed at Cape Helles on May 6, 1915. His battalion went into action and by August 7 they were protecting the landings at Suvla Bay.

His battalion was in action in an attempt to take a Turkish trench when he was shot and wounded. He was heard to say “well, that’s my Blighty wound” and incautiously stood up to be shot in the head and killed by a Turkish sniper.

According to the War Graves Commission he is buried (Plot I, Row E, Grave 11) in the quaintly-named Twelve Tree Copse Cemetery, in the Helles area, about one kilometre south-west of the village of Krithia.

Uncle Charlie had trained as a pharmacist so he may possibly have been acting as a medical orderly and could well have carried no arms as a non-combatant. His parents’ home was next-door-but one to where I was born in Irlam, a Manchester suburb.

I discovered many years later that a great-aunt I also never met had been a nurse in the Army which General Allenby had led in the campaign to occupy Jerusalem and Damascus bringing the war in the Middle East to a conclusion, having knocked the Ottoman Empire out of the war.

It was interesting to learn my great-aunt had been in the column that marched through the Damascus Gate into the Old City of Jerusalem, particularly as two years ago I also walked through the gate which was, so to speak, in her footsteps. It was quite emotional to realise that one family member lost his life at the start of the campaign and another marched with Allenby at the end.

The Cenotaph ceremony was very appropriate and moving, but as the next Centennial is so far in the future I expect this to be the first and last commemoration of Gallipoli; it was good to see the band of the Turkish Air Force in the parade and wreath layers came from a wide spectrum of countries.

For my part I would still like to visit Twelve Tree Copse Cemetery, before I am much older, if only because Uncle Charlie was the only member of my family to lose his life in either World War and deserves more than just a memory.