Charles was born in Chantilly, Oise, France, the youngest of the three children of George Wyndham Newton and his wife, Edith Lois Carter. The Newtons married in Paris on 26 June 1911. Charles had a sister, Charlotte, born in 1913 who died in Paris in 1976 and a brother, Rupert, born in 1916 and who died of typhoid fever in the year in which Charles was born.
Edith came from a family who were famous in the horse-racing world in France for several generations. The Carters who came from Peckleton in Leicestershire, were the founders of the English colony in Chantilly and instrumental in the racing success of the town and France. They intermarried with other English families with racing connections who had moved to Chantilly.
George was a racehorse trainer of some success. He trained in Belgium until 1913, then in France. He was the son of an Army officer, Colonel William Henry Newton and his wife, Alice Emma Georgina Hutton whose father had been Senior Chaplain in Calcutta. On her death in Cheltenham in 1920, Alice, long widowed, left £15,740-9-6. George Newton died on 17 April 1932 at Villa Teddy, Chantilly. Solicitors in Gloucester administered his estate in England which amounted to £1615-1-11.
Charles was educated in England, at Stowe and Matriculated in 1941 winning a History Scholarship to Christ Church.
At the outbreak of war, his mother was in France with his sister, Charlotte, who was engaged to marry.
Charlotte’s daughter told,
“During the war Granny Edith was in England where Charles her son was at Stowe then at Oxford. Her departure from France was a real ordeal; she left from Bordeaux after my mother had refused to follow her to England as she was engaged to my father. In Bordeaux she took (on deck) a Dutch boat whose captain didn’t want to go to England so he was kept in his cabin by English soldiers and the boat sailed down the Spanish and Portuguese coasts to try to avoid German submarines. (apparently on the way she saw sunken ships). After a long navigation she arrived in England to be put in a camp and interrogated as England was afraid of what we call `la cinquième colonne` in French = spies. She managed to phone a Newton cousin who arrived in her Rolls Royce chauffeur-driven car `What’s that all about and who is it that keeps my cousin` (sort of style).
She [Edith] lived in London and then in a village called Buckingham. It took quite some time for her to learn through the Red Cross that her daughter was safe, married and then later she heard about the two granddaughters. She was all alone when Charles volunteered to join the army in the Winchester Rifles as he said `I cannot stay crossed arms when the country I lived in and love is occupied`, and then she heard he was killed. I have the King’s telegram announcing his death. She only came back with one of the first civilian groups to come back to France. I well remember the first time I saw her, it must have been the beginning 1945”
Charles was a Lieutenant in the King's Royal Rifle Corps 10th (The Rangers) Battalion attached to the Green Howards when he was killed at Anzio on 23 May 1944.
He is buried in the Beach Head War Cemetery, Anzio Plot III. H. 9
His mother died in Paris on 22 January 1974.
His cousin, John Henry Forester Cochrane [son of his father’s sister] had been killed over the Netherlands on 4 December 1943.
With thanks to
http://www.tbheritage.com/TurfHallmarks/Trainers/Fr/Anglais3.html