BRAVERY IS difficult to define, whether it is the instinctive reaction of a trained soldier or the studied response to events which threaten his safety and those of his comrades. Few who have been honoured in the field have ever given a satisfactory explanation but their courage has never been in doubt.

This year is the 120th anniversary of the birth of our own local hero who won the Victoria Cross, Britain's highest military decoration for gallantry in action, awarded for most conspicuous bravery, a daring or pre-eminent act of valour, self sacrifice or extreme devotion to duty in the presence of the enemy.

Charles Richard Sharpe was born at Pickworth, ten miles north west of Bourne, to Robert and Charlotte Sharpe on 2nd April 1889 and christened at the parish church of St Andrew's the following year. He attended the local school and then became a farm labourer but left the village in 1905 when he was only sixteen (the family legend is that he ran away from home) and enlisted in the Second Battalion, the Lincolnshire Regiment as a private but received his first promotion to lance corporal at the age of 19. When the First World War broke out, his regiment was serving in Bermuda but was called to active service in Europe, arriving in France on 6th November 1914, and by the following spring, he had been promoted to the rank of acting corporal.

During the spring of 1915, in an Allied assault on Fromelles by General Henry Rawlinson's 4th Army during the Battle of Aubers Ridge, Sharpe, then aged 26, became the first soldier of the war from his regiment to win the VC. When two companies of his battalion reached the German lines near Rouges Bancs, north-east of Neuve Chapelle, after crossing No Man's Land under heavy fire, he captured an enemy trench single handed and led a successful assault on another. The official citation published in the London Gazette on 29th June 1915 said:

Victoria Cross - Acting Corporal Charles Sharpe, 2nd Battalion Lincolnshire Regiment. For most conspicuous bravery, near Rouges Bancs on the 9th May 1915. When in charge of a blocking party sent forward to take a portion of the German trench, he was the first to reach the enemy's position and using bombs with great determination and effect, he himself cleared them out of a trench fifty yards long. By this time all his party had fallen and he was then joined by four other men with whom he attacked the enemy with bombs and captured a further trench 250 yards long.

Sharpe, who was always known by his nickname "Shadder", returned to England on leave for two months and on 24th July 1915, received his award from King George V at Windsor Castle and then took part in a recruiting drive, visiting many places in Lincolnshire including Spalding and Bourne. He was eventually recalled to his regiment and again became involved in front line action when he was the sole survivor on a ten-man bombing raid on the German trenches in Flanders and was badly wounded by a bomb and although he recovered and continued to serve, he carried several pieces of shrapnel in his body until he died.

He remained in the army after the end of the war, reaching the rank of sergeant and served for a brief spell in India and apart from his VC and campaign medals, he was awarded the Long Service and Good Conduct Medal for 18 years of exemplary service. He continued with the colours for a further five years after that and was discharged in 1928 with a total of 23 years' service but returned to the army for a further two years during the Second World War of 1939-45 when he was in his fifties and although too old for active service, he was gainfully employed at home as a Master Sergeant Cook.

Charles Sharpe married a widow, Mrs Rose Ivy Sibley (née Cutting), and they had three children, Elizabeth Ann, who was born on 8th October 1933, John William, born on 4th September 1935, and Norris, birth date unknown but who died at the age of seven. As a civilian, he worked on various jobs in the Grantham and Bourne areas, including time as a labourer and cleaner with the BRM organisation at Bourne and he also taught gardening and physical training at the Hereward Approved School in Bourne where he was considered by the boys as a role model.

It was here that he was injured by a splinter when the school was bombed towards the end of the Second World War. He lived at No 68 Woodview and after a spell as a council refuse collector, his last job was as a gardener for the Bourne United Charities and ironically, one of his duties was to tend the cenotaph and surrounds in the town's War Memorial gardens where the dead from two world wars are remembered.

He eventually moved to live with Dorothy, his daughter from an earlier marriage, at Workington, Cumbria, but thirteen months later, on 17th February 1963, he was taken ill and died in Workington Infirmary after a fall, aged 73. The funeral was held at St Nicholas' Church, Lincoln, with full military honours and he was later buried at the city's Newport Cemetery.

Charles Sharpe was from all contemporary accounts, one of the most unlikely war heroes. He was a farm worker fiercely proud of his rural Lincolnshire heritage, totally unpretentious and an utterly unassuming and modest man. On returning to England after winning the VC, he was asked by a journalist to relate the details of his actions but he said simply: "A British soldier will never glorify his own deeds. I only did my duty."

After his death, his medals and decorations passed to his children who decided to sell them and in 1989 they were sent to Christie's auction rooms in London where they were bought by South Kesteven District Council for £17,000. They are now displayed in the chairman's room at the council's headquarters in Grantham while copies can be seen at the Royal Lincolnshire Regiment Museum in Lincoln. The name of Charles Sharpe has also been remembered in Bourne's street names and a small cul-de-sac off Beech Avenue is known today as Sharpe's Close.