Authors help tell the stories of our WWI fallen soldiers
THREE Cardiff authors have helped to tell the story of Cardiff’s First World War’s fallen soldiers.
Steve Duffy, a former South Wales Echo journalist who was Feature Writer of the Year in 2017 in the Welsh Media Awards, is the author of It Touched Every Street: Fallen Heroes Of The Great War, which tells the stories of the soldiers, sailors, and civilians from the Grangetown area.
Meanwhile, Ceri Stennett and Gwyn Prescott are responsible for Fallen Heroes Of The Great War: In Proud & Honoured Memory which remembers all the valiant sons of Whitchurch, Llandaff North, Birchgrove, Rhiwbina and Tongwynlais.
Ceri, whose dad the late and great Stan Stennett is still fondly remembered, is a well-known Football Association of Wales historian and currently hosts a weekly programme on Radio Cardiff.
Gwyn, a retired university lecturer, is the author of a number of rugby books.
In It Touched Every Street, we learn that the first man from Cardiff to die in the war that was said would end all wars, was William Welton.
The 19-year-old stoker was in the Royal Navy when his ship was sunk by a mine just 32 hours after war had been declared.
Cardiff-born William was the first son of Patrick and Catherine Welton and was brought up at 36 Somerset Street.
As for the oldest Grangetown casualty of the war, that was probably Robert Payne, aged 61, a Mercantile Marine on the SS Llongwen who lived in 5 Bromfield Street.
The ship, on a voyage from Naples to Barry, was sunk by a German submarine.
One soldier who was killed just two days before the end of the war was Tom Witts, 24, apparently the only Cardiff City soccer player who died in the conflict.
He had lived in Eldon Street, now known as Ninian Park Road.
Ceri Stennett and Gwyn Prescott’s book, like Duffy’s, has been researched from local newspapers of the time and from descendants of those service men and women who gave their lives.
As it says on the blurb “A real attempt has been made to portray the men as individuals, and not just as members of a particular battalion, regiment or corps.”
The reader can retrace the lives of the fallen by their pre-war homes, many still standing today.
For instance, we learn that Ivor Augustus Darby was the son of the late Henry and Martha Darby, of 81 Clare Road and husband of Florence Annie Darby of 38 Cairns Street, Cathays.
They married in 1905. He was a butcher’s errand boy, his father a mason’s assistant. He died on April 4, aged 32, and served with the Cheshire Regiment 9th Battalion.
As it says on the blurb of In Proud & Honoured Memory, every death is a human tragedy, but within this small part of a catastropic war the book shines a light on stories of great selflessness, comradeship, devotion to duty and, at times, great heroism.
Both books published by Wordcatcher cost £14.99 and they can be obtained from www. wordcatcher.com or are available on Amazon and the Albany bookshop in Wellfield Road. Incidently, the Cairns Street in Cathays mentioned later became Rhymney Street after 184 of its residents petitioned the local authority to have the name changed.
My late friend Emrys Davies, who lived in nearby Coburn Street, told me many years ago now that Cairns Street was notorius for being a very rough street and that it was nicknamed Flagon Alley.