World War One hero drove his own car to battle
HE WAS the son of one of Wales’ wealthiest industrial families who drove his own car to the battlefields of France to help the wounded.
Four years later on April 12 1918 Claud Insole was killed in action, like millions of other young men, in the trenches of World War One France.
The public are being invited to a ceremony today mark the centenary of the death of the Great War hero at the house where he grew up. Insole Court, the neo-Gothic mansion in Llandaff, built by his family, was a world away from the mud and blood filled trenches of the Western Front where he died.
As a wealthy young man Claud, the fourth of six children of George and Jessy Insole, was one of the few to own his own car in Cardiff in 1914.
Aged 26 at the outset of World War One he gave up his privileged life and drove the car to the battlefields of France. Here he enlisted as a volunteer ambulance driver with the British Red Cross Society, often working under enemy fire and probably using his own vehicle at times.
A year later Claud joined the newly formed Welsh Guards. Within weeks he survived fighting in the bloody Battle of Loos where the battalion suffered more than 300 casualties in its first attack.
Later made a captain he led successful raids behind enemy lines, was injured out and returned to battle.
Fighting on the Western Front the Captain from Cardiff, known by those he commanded for his gentle manner and slight lisp, was awarded the Military Cross, the 1914 Star, the British War Medal and the Victory Medal.
Killed in action in Boyelles aged 30, six months before fighting ended, he was buried in the village of Bailleumont near Arras.
By the time of his death the world he grew up in had vanished.
The fortunes of the Insole family, who made their money in coal-mining interests across South Wales and helped develop the Barry Railway Company, were already on the wane as war gripped Europe.
Fourteen years after Claud’s death the Insole Court estate was subject to compulsory purchase to make way for the Cardiff Orbital Road (Western Avenue).
Alun Salisbury from The Friends of Insole Court said he hopes the ceremony, and re-dedication of a tree in Claud’s memory, will ensure the family’s link to Cardiff’s history is not forgotten.
The centenary ceremony in the Acer Garden at Insole Court will be attended by Cardiff Lord Mayor Cllr Bob Derbyshire, Lord-Lieutenant of South Glamorgan Morfudd Ann Meredith, Captain Sir Norman Lloyd-Edwards and Major Martin Browne Asst Adjutant Welsh Guards (retired) and a small contingent of Guardsmen in scarlet uniforms.
Lance Sergeant Laing from the Welsh Guards will sound the Last Post on his bugle 100 years to the day the captain died.
Afterwards the 1915 film: A Day with the Battalion of the Welsh Guards, in which Capt Claud Insole appears, will be shown inside the house where World War One memorabilia will be on display.
The public is invited to the event which starts at 10.45am. People wishing to attend are asked to meet in the car park at Insole Court off Fairwater Road, Llandaff.