COMMEMORATED IN PERPETUITY BY THE

Commonwealth War Graves Commission

Charles Prior initially joined the Royal Berkshire Regiment before transferring to the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry. The KOYLI 2/4th Battalion fought with the 138th Infantry Brigade, part of the 46th Infantry Division in the Battle of Dunkirk (May 26 to June 4, 1940). Unable to be evacuated with the rest of the BEF, they fought a rear-guard action, fighting the German Army on the Seine, before eventual evacuation in Operation Ariel from Cherbourg and St. Nazaire in June 1940.

The KOYLI also fought in Tunisia in the final stages of the North Africa Campaign. The campaign had begun on 8 November 1942, when Commonwealth and American troops made a series of landings in Algeria and Morocco. The Germans responded immediately by sending a force from Sicily to northern Tunisia, which checked the Allied advance east in early December. In the south, the Axis forces defeated at El Alamein withdrew into Tunisia along the coast through Libya, pursued by the Allied Eighth Army.

By mid-April 1943, the combined Axis force was hemmed into a small corner of north-eastern Tunisia and the Allies were grouped for their final offensive.

This is where Private Charles Prior was killed, on 21st April 1943, just weeks before the liberation of Tunisia by the Allied forces. In May 1943, the war in North Africa came to an end in Tunisia with the defeat of the Axis powers by a combined Allied force. 

Prior Crescent in Steventon is named after this soldier's family. Please click here for further information.