A private with the 18th Battalion, he landed at Gallipoli on August 19 and was part of the force sent to capture a Turkish communications trench on Hill 60. The attack, made with fixed bayonets, was launched at 5am on August 22 in full light of dawn.

The Australians won the trench but were forced to withdraw by 7am following a strong Turkish counter attack that included machineguns and bombardiers.

Charles, believed to have died in the first 30 minutes of the assault, was one of the more than 200 men the battalion lost in the space of two hours.

The deaths, at least as far as the official war historian C.E.W Bean was concerned, were an unnecessary waste of fine young men.

He described the reinforcements as ''only half trained though considered sufficiently instructed for trench warfare'' and noted ''their great, healthy bodies and hearty manner brought cheerfulness wherever they were seen by the thin, worn men on the Anzac slopes''.

Bean reports ''the New Zealand staff, being in urgent need to seize the top of Hill 60, asked for these reinforcements. After at first refusing, General Godley agreed. The 18th Battalion was brought around in a hurry through the newly won gullies and out on to the flats to make the dawn attack. As happened on other such occasions, the arrangements were inadequate, and the time too short and the battalion far too untrained.

''It attacked bravely, with little notion of what it was to do, and though at first extending the New Zealanders' gain, it was gradually driven back on them after losing half its men killed and wounded.''

George, the younger brother by four years, was less than 1000 metres from the scene and would have learnt of Charles's death almost immediately, family historian Jacqueline Jakeman said.

''Charles has no known grave and was presumably buried on the battlefield,'' she said.

''He is commemorated at the Lone Pine Memorial and at the Australian War Memorial.''