Poignant diary reveals the brief respites from horrors of frontline
100 years ago this week, a South Wales soldier wrote of an idyllic day in the French sunshine. In a brief escape from the horrors of war, Arthur David Glanffrwd Evans was only too aware that such opportunities – far from the realities elsewhere of malaria, war camps and teenage enlistees – were all too rare. Ceri Joseph of Porthcawl Museum reports...
MAY 1, 1918: “Weather nice. Boating and bathing on the Somme”. So reads a diary entry of Second Lieutenant Arthur David Glanffrwd Evans MC of Glamorgan RHA, in a journal he kept from the beginning of the German Offensive.
For the soldier, better known as Glan, the well-earned respite had been hard won after fighting near Villers Brettoneux in the defence of Amiens; one of Germany’s objectives outlined in their Georgette Offensive.
Villers Bretonneux itself had been lost on April 24 but was regained that same night by the Australian Infantry, resulting in what was described as “a few hundred Boche prisoners”.
From May 16, Glan’s unit was stationed at Bonnay, which he describes as a “very good spot”.
He wrote: “Hardly any shells about. Lovely country.”
After the action, Glan went on leave from May 29, during which time his unit moved up to Vaux-surSomme where they “fired in support of a little show by the Aussies”.
“We begin to take the initiative,” he wrote. By the time Glan had returned from leave on July 1 the German threat had all but abated and 500,000 more Americans had arrived in support of the allies.
Through his service Glan was promoted to the position of major at the end of the war.
He returned home to work initially at the Briton Ferry Steel Company and, later, at the Neath Canal Company.
Despite returning home a hero, Glan did not retire from his military service.
Throughout his life the major remained in the Territorial Army and moved to Porthcawl a few years prior to World War Two, when, as Major DG Evans, he commanded the 24th Glamorgan Battalion Home Guard. He died after a short illness in June 1974, aged 81.
In Porthcawl, the first week of May 1918 also brought sad news with the death of another resident killed while serving his country.
Private Gordon Stanley Perry, 1st Battalion, Welsh Regiment, died in Salonika on April 24 from Blackwater fever – a complication of malaria.
Stanley, as he was known, had been born in Penarth in 1895, the youngest of four boys and three girls.
At 23 he had become the postmaster at New Road, Porthcawl.
After the outbreak of war Stanley had initially joined the South Wales Borderers but within a year had been transferred to the Welsh Regiment.
A week before his death his parents received a telegram informing them that their son, through suffering severe bouts of malaria, had become dangerously ill. The telegram they must have dreaded arrived very shortly afterwards.
He is one of 1,180 Commonwealth servicemen buried in the Mikra British Cemetery, Kalamaria.
Better news of another Porthcawlian suffering from malaria reached the town on May 2.
Private Thomas Isaac Russell, 23rd Battalion, Welsh Regiment and referred to in the Porthcawl News as “Porthcawl’s own” had been brought home from Salonika and was recuperating in Cardiff.
Tom, the oldest of three brothers and three sisters, was born in Tonyrefail in April 1895.
His father Frederick was a coal miner and brought the family to live at 24 George Street, Porthcawl, in 1910.
In October 1915, Tom, then married, enlisted into the 23rd Battalion at Porthcawl, along with his younger brother George.
At only 15, George had originally enlisted into the Glamorgan Yeomanry five months before, giving his age as 18 years and six months.
By May 28 he had been rumbled and was discharged.
Still determined to enlist he later attested with his older brother, carrying a letter from his mother, Caroline, giving her permission for him to enlist.
He was accepted after giving his age as 17. For George, however, his true age was discovered after undergoing training at Newton, Elveden Camp, Thetford, and Pirbright, during which time he had been punished four times for disobeying orders and using bad language.
He was discharged from Pirbright on July 31, 1916.
Tom, on the other hand, fought alongside his other brother Morgan.
Morgan had previously joined the Royal Welsh Fusiliers in December of 1914, but had been severely wounded earlier in 1918.
He was discharged and awarded a silver badge.
After the war and after recovering from malaria, Tom followed his sister Violet to Los Angeles, America.
He married again in 1938 and became a naturalised American citizen in 1945.
He died in March 1967. On Saturday, May 4, the Porthcawl Lodge Discharged Sailors and Soldiers Federation organised a charity football match on the college field behind today’s Seabank Hotel.
The match was held between The “Rest” Wounded Heroes XI and A Porthcawl XI, with all proceeds in aid of local prisoners of war. £100 was raised.
One of those prisoners was Private George Walton, 7th Battalion of the Border Regiment, whose family lived at 11 Queen’s Avenue, Porthcawl.
Pte Walton had enlisted in 1915 and fought in many battles including the Somme.
However, he was wounded in the right thigh and taken prisoner at Arras, France, in April 1917.
As a prisoner Pte Walton was taken, firstly, to Douai Hospital and then to Giessen Hospital.
After convalescence he was employed as a labourer on a farm but in March 1918 was sent to Giessen Camp where he remained until the armistice.
On the cessation of hostilities, he was sent by train to Metz and thence through Calais to Dover, arriving home in December 1918.
George was the first Porthcawl prisoner of war to return home.
Meanwhile, not all stories of prisoner of wars had the same happy ending.
The family of Judge Rowlands, of Newton, had hoped since November 1917 that their son, second lieutenant Franklyn Theodore Rowland Rowlands, was a prisoner of war.
They received a telegram early May 1918 informing them that he had been killed on November 21 1917, and been “buried by the enemy”.