REMEMBERED

that day, but only 135 men answered the roll call the following day.

In August 1918, however, on arriving back at Mametz Wood, the troops faced different circumstances.

Writing back to the Cambria Daily News from the front line, Mr Gibbs reported: “‘Mametz Wood, captured by the Welsh in 1916, recaptured 1918. Huzzah!’ was the wire sent to headquarters when the Welsh gained the wood on August 25.

“This morning they captured Delville Wood, the old ‘Devil’s Wood,’ which made a black chapter of history in 1916; and then made to Ginchy, and away towards Morval.

“We had Delville Wood for a time a day or two ago, and then fell back from it the day before yesterday under fierce shelling; but it was ours this morning as I saw for myself when I went up to it, and then took a field track towards Ginchy.”

Among the celebration, however, there was also room for some poignant reflection.

Walking the route taken by fallen soldiers, Mr Gibbs wrote: “To us who have followed this war in body and in spirit, those upheaved and mangled fields are sacred ground, strewn with the graves of our men who fell there.

“Their graves are there still, as I saw today, with the white crosses that were put up to them still standing above the turmoil of earth.

“The storm-clouds of yesterday had cleared, and the sky was blue, between snow mountains, and over the Somme battlefields there was a golden light which glinted on the trunks of the black, dead trees in Devil’s Wood and Mametz Wood, and those thin rows of charred masts which were once Trones Wood and Bernafay, where many of our men fought and fell two years ago.”

In comparison, while articles told of the victories on the battlefields of France, discussion at home had turned to what would happen once the war drew to an end.

On August 30 a debate in Barry cen-