The untimely death of Charles occured as a result of a motor cycle
accident in Thailand. His ashes were scattered at sea after a Buddhist
ceremony.Following his time at Pembroke House from 1973, he went on to
Framlingham, returning to Pembroke in 1985 as a gap student, before going up
to Sandhurst in 1986. He served with the Ulster Defence Regiment, now the
Royal Irish Regiment, in Germany for 3 years, during which time he revisited
Kenya, climbing both Mt Kenya and Mt Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, raising money
for charity. On leaving the services, he became actively involved with The
HALO Trust, (Hazardous Areas Life Support Organization – which was endorsed
by the late princess Diana) – a land mine and un-exploded ordinance clearing
charity, working in Mozambique, Angola Sudan, Akhazia, Chechnya and
Cambodia. In 1998, Russian state security agencies accused British subjects
Charlie Emms, Nicholas Nobbs and Zimbabwe citizen Thomas Dibb of being
engaged in spying and subversive activities against Russia in Chechnya, an
accusation vehemently denied by the charity’s director, Guy Willoughby, a
former Coldstream Guards officer based in Dumfriesshire, Scotland. “We just
completely deny this sort of allegation that we were in any way supporting
mine laying or any form of terrorist activity. We were running a standard
humanitarian mine-clearing organization and the Russian authorities knew
about it,” he said at the time. Senior aid workers with long experience of
the extremely dangerous conditions in Chechnya praised the Halo Trust’s
professionalism and courage in conducting mine clearance operations that no
one else would take on. Charles was a qualified dive instructor at the time
of his death, living on the island of Phuket