My grateful thanks to John Llewellyn Davies for the pictures and the text. You really do bring the spirit of your father to us all.
‘Roses are Blooming in Picardy’
My father Richard (‘Dick’) was unique in that he survived four years as an infantryman in the Great War serving in the forward trenches – where 2430 soldiers of the three battalions of the Monmouthshire Regiment gave their lives. Of the original seven members of the 3rd Mons from his home village of Hollybush who entrained for mobilisation and assembled at the market hall, Abergavenny (and paraded in Bailey Park) on the 5th of August 1914, he was the only one to survive the war.
After military training, refitting and carrying out exercises at Pembroke Dock, Oswestry, Northampton, Suffolk (where he worked on coastal defences) and Cambridge he arrived at Le Havre in France via Southampton on 13th February 1915 and entered the line on the 21st of that month at “ ‘Plugstreet’ (Ploegsteert) Wood” (near Wulverghem) during the 2nd battle of Ypres (Wulverghem-St Eloi sector) under instruction with the 1st Battalion the Welch Regiment. Served at Ypres to end of December 1915 with the 28th Division (Mar-Aug) then with the 49th Division (Sept-Dec).
During the second battle of Ypres he was wounded in the head by shrapnel and gassed. This was on the railway line at Frezenburg on 8th May 1915 during what was known as the ‘battle of St Julien’. Attached to the 28th division, the 1st, 2nd and 3rd battalions of the Monmouthshire Regiment took part in this battle. It was said at the time that almost every family in Monmouthshire was affected by the casualties. So as not to upset morale at home no casualty list was published in the Abergavenny Chronicle for the 8th of May 1915.
Following hospitalisation at Rouen he was returned to the line at the Yser canal front, north of Ypres, rejoining the remnants of the 3rd Mons who had joined with those remaining of the 1st and 2nd Mons in August 1915 to form a combined battalion. It was about this time that he received the sad news that his mother had died at home in Hollybush.
As the battalion formed up at Elverdinghe chateau to march south to the Somme (Thiepval) area on the 29th December 1915 a large shell fired from the Lille area landed between B and C Companies on the road killing 39 men and wounding 30 others. Many of the casualties were recently arrived, raw replacements, who had not seen any action. It was a ghastly send-off from the Ypres salient which they were not to see again as a battalion
From December 1915 to September 1916 he served in the Somme (thiepval) area in support of the 49th Division, from the 1st July being attached to the 36th (Ulster) Division when he took part in the battle of the Somme.
This battle was fought to relieve severe German pressure on the French (particularly so at Verdun) who were holding the line south of the British.
On 22nd September 1916 the 3rd Mons battalion was disbanded. So, together with some of those remaining of the reconstituted 3rd Mons Battalion (others were sent to other Battalions in the Division such as the 1st Mons, 2nd Mons and 11th Cheshires), he was transferred to the 9th Battalion of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers and served with them until his demobilisation on 7th January 1919 when he was reclassified medically as B1. He said that this was a great fighting unit under a very good commanding officer and divisional commander.
With the 9th RWF he took part in the battles of Cambrai, Arras, Passchendaele (where a hot, spent bullet ricocheted and forcibly struck him in the left arm) and Messines and fought the retreat of March 1918 attached, with remnants of other units, to the Hood Battalion of the Royal Naval Division. His battalion was reformed for the advance and eventually took part in the battle of the Ancre.
Following his demob in 1919, suffering from ‘shellshock’, he spent a year in a sanatorium near Chepstow.
Throughout his life, his ‘2nd Ypres’ head wound marks were always visible. As was also the ‘spent bullet’ mark on his arm – a present from Passchendaele!
But he had survived. He had come through - although not entirely unscathed - the ‘Great War’, - ‘the war to end all wars’- which had not only it’s terrible shelling, gas attacks and death, but also it’s ‘hard tack’ rations, mud, atrocious conditions, ‘trench foot,’ disease, lice and rats!
He had taken part in what was to prove to be the greatest adventure of his life.
But for so many of his comrades it had proved to be their last, final and crowning adventure.
‘The cruellest and most terrible war that had ever scourged mankind’ had finally ended.
The ‘character’
He was a great character and had a lot of military habits and sayings:
He wore boots from the day he joined the army until the day he died.
He never rode anywhere if he could easily walk there.
He invariably sat on a hard chair at the kitchen table (never did he sit on an easy chair), sometimes moving his hard chair to the right hand side of the coal fireplace which he tended with the poker.
He loved children. Had nine of them. As well as his seven sons he had two daughters Enid and Jean who were the youngest of his children. Wrapped his grandchildren in a shawl ‘Welsh fashion’ and took them for a walk up the mountain. On his return said: “I thought you said he couldn’t talk yet. Well up that mountain we have great conversations.”
Thought that children should be children. Sat there at the table not in the least perturbed as they gambolled wildly around him; but when the ‘news’ came on, the raising of his hand was all that was needed to give him complete silence. Never punished his children; the threat of him taking off his belt was enough!
Loved helping his children write their school essays. On their return from school the next day he would say: “Well, what was it? Did I get an ‘A’?”
One of his favourite snacks was a lump of cheese and a hunk of crusty bread, eaten with a knife.
Born in High Street, Abergwynfi, Glamorgan on 21st August 1894, he was a monoglot Welsh speaker when, in 1899, at the age of five, his coalmining family moved to Hollybush near Blackwood. Said that he was sent home early from the village school his first day there as he could not understand a word of what his teacher was saying. “When they finally took me back into school they kept me in standard 1 for seven years” he boasted.
Worked at the Royal Ordinance Factory, Glascoed to age 60, then was employed at Ebbw Vale steelworks Bessemer plant before retiring in 1964 aged 70. Unlike his wife who started attended old age pensioner’s meetings he never considered himself old enough to do so. “You can take me there after I’m gone, woman” he would say.
He was coming down the stairs one morning when his wife shouted from the kitchen: “What would you like for breakfast, Dick?” He replied: “ Nine cups of tea and five woodbines, Woman! And proper tea! Not those new-fangled teabags!”
He walked to town and back with a shopping bag regularly and haggled over what he considered the exorbitant price of everything with the shopkeepers.
He was devoted to his wife and children. His wife Winifred was the typical ‘Welsh mam’ who had herself lost a brother ‘missing in action’ in April 1918 who had also served in the 3rd Mons. As she stood near the cooker serving her family and always eating last he would say jocularly to her: “Nip around me woman”.
A socialist, he voted for Nye Bevan. Did not believe in material possessions and had none. All that he had he gave to his family. Had only an elementary schooling but was self taught and intelligent. Had bags of common sense and could converse knowledgeably on many subjects. “Live for today” was his maxim.
It was a happy home. No greater love had any parents for their children. Or, looking back now, no greater love either had any children for their parents, and also, for that matter, for each other.
Throughout his life he never let his hair grow more than half an inch and ensured that he put on a fresh, clean pair of socks every morning. This habit followed his experience in the trenches of lice and trench foot.
Liked his ‘Wild Woodbines’ but never drank alcohol.
Saw each of his sons off into the army with a brisk handshake at the garden gate, while their mother wept at the front door.
Had a tolerance of the Germans but less so for the French. He suggested to a French onion man in 1955 that it was probably his father who had shut off the water supply on a farm at which his platoon was billeted near Armentieres in 1915.
Just like Adolf Hitler who faced him in the German trenches at Ypres he was a Corporal.
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What he said:
“ We never heard Jerry singing in his trenches after the Somme”.
“ I ‘heard’ the shellfire right up until the 1930s but I can still hear the boys singing today”. Said about 1960.
“It wasn’t just our shellfire that defeated the Hun – it was our lashings of good British tea!”
Of those shot at dawn, one of whom he knew: “Poor fellow, he was never up to it”.
Of the Luftwaffe in World War 2: “Come down and fight like your fathers did you lousy shower of b*****ds!”
This said during the 1941 bombing of Bristol and Newport docks when the family were living near Ynysddu - where two of the bombs dropped!
Of the Australians: “ Great Soldiers; they honestly thought that British officers who wore monocles did so just to upset the Aussies and they took great offence to it!”
Of four Australians that tried to leave a horse remount depot in 1918 wearing shorts as riding habit: “ They were ordered not to do so by a British Lieutenant. They rode past him shortly afterwards bare bum and waving their shorts in the air!”
Of one of his sons: “Don’t mention that word ‘work’ in front of him; his face turns whiter than did the faces of the boys at the battle of the Somme!”
“The home leave passes I was granted were: 48 hours on 13rd November 1914, 10 days in September 1916 and 10 days in September 1917.” I took my full kit home on leave with me including my rifle and bayonet – but no ammo! The trench lice ‘hitched a ride’ home with me!”
“I’m a left hander - but I never saw a left handed rifle.”
“ To us British Ypres was always ‘Wipers’ but it was ‘Eep’ to the French”
“ I joined up in 1914 just to get the annual holiday away at TA camp - and a free pair of boots.”
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In the mid 1960s he made his only return trip to the old battlefields of France and Flanders. Standing by the graves of the fallen, many of whom he knew, he remarked feelingly to his son Haydn who accompanied him: “You know, these lads were all about my age, but I still see them standing here now as young boys. There, but for the grace of God, went I.”
Dick in 1965 at the grave of his pal Richard Ashton who was killed aged just 17 years old.
Pte Richard Ashton
Captain O.W.D. Steel Circa 1914/5
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Dad died at Llandough Hospital, Penarth on 3rd April 1973 aged 78.
He had grown old; ‘age had wearied him and the years condemned’.
His handwritten will, which named his sons Dick and John as executors, contained just three words: “All to Mam.”
He was truly a ‘one off’ and his memory I will always treasure.
I remember him at every going down of the sun.
And every morning.
But, as they say - old soldiers never die.
(John Llewellyn Davies)