Nowadays the only visible reminder of the First World War in the towns and many of the villages throughout Wales is the war memorial. The rural village of Llanfrothen in the modern county of Gwynedd is no exception. Erected in 1922 it lists the names of the dead who had resided in Llanfrothen Parish, which includes the neighbouring hamlets of Croesor and Rhyd. The Grade II listed monument was designed by Sir Clough Williams-Ellis, a noted and prolific architect and resident of Llanfrothen for most of his life who himself had served in the Welsh Guards and Royal Tank Corps between 1915 and 1918. Best known for his construction of the nearby Italianate village of Portmeirion, the stone memorial, not surprisingly, is more ornate than most. It comprises a square tower whose walls taper inward, culminating in a pyramidal roof with a finial resembling a flaming urn sitting atop. After World War II the names of local men who had given their lives were carved on a slate slab located directly opposite to the inward facing slate plaque which commemorates the First World War dead. The name of Clough’s son, Lieutenant Christopher Williams-Ellis of the Welsh Guards, is carved into the later slate. He was killed in battle at Montecassino, Italy in 1945.

There are seventeen names on the slate plaque concerned with the First World War. They served in all three forces, though the majority were in the army. Arranged in alphabetical order they are, as inscribed:

E Ellis;  H D Evans;  J O Evans;  R R Griffiths;  D P Jones;  E Jones;  H Jones;  J O Jones;  W Kellow;  D Owen;  E Owen;  O E Owen;  S Owen;  D M Williams;  R D Williams;  W D Williams;  W R Williams.

Echoing Jack Yates’ newspaper article of 1917, Morfudd Nia Jones, writing on the National Library of Wales website, describes young men like these from rural Wales:

“These were Welsh-speaking, simple, unpretentious working-class boys” now living in “the bigger world they’d been forced to inhabit by the declaration of war.” 

Applied to the men from Llanfrothen Parish, she describes all of them (with a single exception) well. They would probably have stood out most noticeably by having English as a second language. Data gleaned from the 1891 census in the administrative district of Ffestiniog, which included Llanfrothen Parish, shows that slightly fewer than 77% reported themselves as monoglot Welsh while fewer than 2.5% could speak only English. These figures are prone to some exaggeration, certainly, as some people are known to have claimed no knowledge of spoken English in an attempt to bolster the standing of the Welsh language. This was undoubtedly intended to counter, among other things, the prevailing attitude in their children’s education to the effect that ‘Englishness’ and fluency in the English language was a cultural norm and failure to grasp this ‘fact’ and act accordingly branded a child as somehow intellectually inferior. There is a plethora of disapproving reports from government inspectors of the day attesting to this view, littered with disapproving comments like “Emrys Jones has the Welsh accent rather strong when speaking English” and “James Hedley Jacob’s accent would be noticeable out of Wales.” As local historian Bob Owen noted, the result was often children more knowledgeable of the geography of the Lake District than their native Snowdonia and of “third rate English poets” than local Welsh poets.

Nevertheless, such subterfuge by parents would have impacted only on the perception of bilingualism; the number of those who considered and used Welsh as their daily first language would have remained unaffected. Whatever the actual situation, it remains the case that twenty years later, in the census of 1911, 37.5% of the population of the county of Meirionethshire (of which Llanfrothen is part) still described themselves as monoglot Welsh speakers. These local statistics were unable to be sustained throughout Wales, however, for the war had a significant effect on the language. Half of the soldiers who enlisted in Wales and later killed were first-language Welsh speakers and so the decade 1911-1921 saw an unparalleled decrease of 15% in the total numbers of Welsh speakers.

Ironically, this loss of first-language Welsh speakers occurred after several decades of a slow but sure appreciation from outside Wales of its distinct cultural and national identity. The first sign of this was probably the passing of the 1881 Welsh Sunday Closing Act, followed by Cardiff attaining city status in 1905. The following year saw the newly elected Liberal government establishing several Welsh-only bodies, including a Department of the Board of Education, the National Council for Wales for Agriculture, and a Welsh Insurance Commission, along with a National Library and National Museum. It is telling, then, that the fledgling modern nationhood of Wales (as well as recognition of the already well established national identities of Scotland and Ireland) was so blithely ignored in some quarters. This is amply illustrated by the very first words to the forward of the document 'The Roll of Honour: A Biographical Record of all members of His Majesties Naval and military Forces Who Have Fallen in the War':

“These men have laid down their lives for England...........”

This is insulting to the memory of those Welshmen who gave their lives. It is likely that few would have seen themselves as risking their lives solely for the good of England. Wales, yes. Britain maybe, but not England alone. The Irish writer Padraig Yeates recounts how his grandfather, on receiving a medal for gallantry, replied to the King's patronising "congratulations, Paddy" with the retort "thanks, Kingy". It was, writes Yeates in his essay 'No Poppy, Please':

"His way of saying he was not fighting for king and country, to save the British Empire or to keep his betters in the manner to which they felt entitled."

Indeed, the decisive factor for some Welshmen (and no doubt some Irishmen) was a sense of kinship with Belgium, another small nation with politically and culturally overpowering neighbours. As local politician Lloyd George declared, the war was one, “fought on behalf of five foot five nations.” Worse, the ‘Roll of Honour’ is scandalously incomplete and its content overwhelmingly English. Only one of those seventeen men from Llanfrothen Parish named on the memorial stone rates a mention; the only one who had achieved an officer’s commission. Not surprisingly, attitudes like this, as well as the influence of some nonconformist preachers, had traditionally led the Welsh to be less than enthusiastic at the idea of serving in a British army dominated by the English. As the poet Robert Graves observed:

“The chapels held soldiering to be sinful and in Merioneth the chapels had the last word.”

In 1913, although the population of Wales constituted 5.4% of the total British population, only 1.8% of the British army were sourced from Wales. Even Welsh regiments were forced to regularly recruit in England, leading to the Royal Welsh Fusiliers being known colloquially as ‘The Royal Birmingham Fusliers’. Although Welsh enlistment picked up at the start of the war, they still lagged behind the rest of Britain; whereas 6.61% of Scottish and 6.04% of English males enlisted within the first month, the figure was 5.83% for Welsh men. The figure for bona fide Welshmen was actually lower; it is estimated that around 20% of the men living in Wales who had voluntarily enlisted at the start of war had been born in England. Nor was this attitude confined to Welshmen living in Wales. In October 1914, the 'South Wales Daily News' reported that plans to raise a separate London Welsh Regiment had to be been abandoned as only half of the necessary one thousand men had enlisted. These were later incorporated into the 15th Battalion of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers. It is ironic, then, that the casualty rate for soldiers from Merionethshire, a region that saw hardly any English immigration compared to South-East Wales, was twice that of the national average.

So, while the events that that began the war are often portrayed as the stuff of high society, recounting tales of prime ministers, aristocrats and generals, the day to day reality of the war itself, of the rank and file fighting soldier; the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker, or, in the case of the men from Llanfrothen, the quarryman and farm worker, was as far as you can get from such opulent fantasy. What follows here, as well as can be pieced together, are the brief lives of ordinary young Welshmen who found themselves, through no particular desire or fault of their own, embedded in situations of extraordinary madness.

 

William David Williams (1895-1915)

The first man to die with a connection to Llanfrothen Parish was William David Williams. Records indicate that he was born in Llanfrothen in 1895 to Owen and Ellen Williams (née Lloyd) and baptised in Llanfrothen church on June 2nd 1895. A church baptism, while it would hold no particular significance in most European countries, was not the norm for a working class family in Llanfrothen, due to the strong nonconformist religious tradition in Wales. The then Anglican-parented ‘Church in Wales’ (disestablished in 1921) had long been associated with cultural 'Englishness' and 'landlordism' and catered largely to the local English and 'aspiring' Welsh who tended to speak English by choice, even when their own language could be fully understood and fluently spoken. In other words, attending church, rather than a chapel belonging to a nonconformist sect, was often seen as a prime social indicator of influence and wealth or the desire for that influence and wealth. Thus the majority of working class families in Llanfrothen Parish (or indeed most rural Welsh villages) in the early part of the twentieth century did not attend church and did not baptise their children in the church.

Also unusually for the era, William David appears to have been an only child. The war memorial lists the family as having lived at ‘Penstep’, then two separate dwellings and now a single residence. However, mistakes on war memorials are by no means unusual and if indeed he did live there it appears to have been only for a short time. According to the 1901 census the family lived in one of the Plas Brondanw apartments and on that particular night William David was staying with his maternal grandparents David & Anne Lloyd at Pen Y Domen, a nearby cottage. By the time of the next census  in 1911 his maternal grandparents (but not his parents), are listed as residing at Penstep, but William David Williams, then aged 16 years, was living and working on a farm named Ty’n Dwr owned by a Jannett Griffith aged 76 years and her daughter, also Jannett, aged 50 years. Then, sometime between 1911 and 1914 William David appears to have shifted to South Wales, either with, or to join his parents, and subsequently lived with them at 23 Penn Street, Treharris, Glamorgan.

It was here that William David Williams volunteered for the army at the start of war, assigned to the 1st Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment (regimental number 12318) where he served as a Private. In September 1940 the War Office repository in Arnside Street, London was badly damaged in a German bombing raid. Over half of enlistment documents, as well as other First World War records were either burnt or heavily damaged by water, including those of William David Williams. There is therefore no enlistment record indicating how he made his living, which might give some clue as to why the family relocated to South Wales. Most likely, however, the move was made to take advantage of the higher wages, and more regular work, as well as the more enticing urban lifestyle available in the South Wales coal producing regions.

Coal was an industry which had undergone an astonishing rate of growth in the previous half century. There were 688 collieries in South Wales in 1910, employing 10% of all the males then residing in Wales and responsible for producing a third of all the coal mined in the world at that time. The requirement for labour caused a 253% increase in population in the county of Glamorgan between 1861 and 1911, a rate of immigration matched only by the United States. The population of the Rhondda Valley alone, for example, had increased from 12,000 to 128,000 in the 30 years following 1861. Comparisons of censuses between1851 to 1911 indicate the impact that the coalfields had on the Welsh demographic; by 1911 more than two-thirds of the total population of Wales lived in either Glamorgan or Monmouthshire. The coalfields were also directly responsible for a massive concurrent increase in urbanisation. In 1851 Wales was an overwhelmingly rural nation with eight in ten of the population resided in rural parishes and small villages, such as Llanfrothen. However, by 1911 this figure had halved and was now considerably less than 50%. Thus the majority of Welsh people, such as the Williams family, were now living in urbanised areas such as Treharris. Indeed, It would surprise many people to know that the proportion of the Welsh population who made their living from agriculture, forestry and fishing in 1911 was as low as 12%.

Another reason for moving from that part of Wales where a large number of the workforce had traditionally been employed in slate-quarrying (in Llanfrothen, by far the majority of men) to a coal mining district might have been the perception that coal mining was a far safer option. The Inspector of Mines for North Wales, Clement La Neve Foster had written in one of his annual reports in the late 1890s that:

"The average death rate from accidents underground is nearly twice as high in the slate mines as in other mines of my district...............as far as safety is concerned it is better to work in a colliery than in an underground slate mine.” 

In a paper authored by Dr John Williams in the 1890s, ‘Peryglon i lechyd y Chwarelwr’ (Dangers to the Health of the Quarryman) quantifiable evidence was presented of the dangers inherent in slate quarrying. Between 1883 and 1893 the mean age at death of those employed in the dressing sheds where slate dust was most concentrated was 47.9 years. Those working underground actually digging the slate had the advantage of only a few more months, 48.1 years. In contrast, the mean age of death for those men with least exposure to the dust, such as engine drivers and plate layers, was well above the national average, at 60.3 years.

In the event, William David Williams was not to succumb to a mining disease or a pit disaster in either a slate quarry or coal mine. He was killed in action on May 9th 1915 during the Battle of Aubers Ridge. This joint Franco-British attack was initially planned for several days earlier but heavy rain on May 6th followed by dense mist on May 7th had caused a postponement. May 9th was a sunny, cloudless day. The following extract is from a letter written on the day by Harry Boneham, of Mansfield, England, an infantryman at Aubers, to the landlord of his local pub. It was published in the ‘Mansfield Chronicle' on May 21st 1915:

"Eventually, however, we saw streams of light in the east, followed shortly afterwards by a beautiful sunrise. Skylarks were whistling overhead as gaily as could be, as if there were no such thing as war in the world. What a change in the state of affairs there was a few minutes later though. A single shell came howling through the air from one of our big guns far at the back. This was followed by a regular hurricane of shells from all the guns that had been massed for the attack. The noise was deafening, what with the whizzing overhead and the explosions in front, while the sight behind the German trenches reminded one of a storm at sea, clouds of dust and earth being thrown into the air much as the spray is when waves dash on the rocks"

Official records show the British army suffered 11,619 casualties at Aubers Ridge yet they made no advance on the German line at all; the vast majority fell in the most pointless way imaginable, within a few metres of their front-line trench. By the time the 1st Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment attacked during the afternoon, most of the British losses had already occurred. William David Williams' regiment were no doubt aware of this. One can only imagine the ominous mood that must have prevailed as they climbed out of their trenches with the knowledge that so many of their comrades had already been mowed down by machine guns. That afternoon, twenty-one year old William David Williams fell too, alongside 261 of his regimental colleagues.

Although the use of machine guns was not unknown to any of the European armies, they had previously only been used against the natives of colonial territories and never on European soil. They had, nevertheless, been used with devastating effectiveness. During the Maji-Maji rebellion in German East Africa in 1905, a native spiritual leader named Kinjikitile Ngwale managed to convince thousands of warriors from several tribes that he had cast a spell that would that turn German machine gun bullets into water. Armed only with spears and poison arrows they repeatedly charged a German fortification armed with only two machine guns until all had been slaughtered. Although superstition no longer played any significant role in European warfare, indicative of the short-sightedness of the British (and French and Russian) military establishments was the denial that machine guns would feature largely in any conflict between civilised nations and, even if they were, they would make little difference to the outcome. In common with East African tribal leaders, General Haig had no problem ordering his troops to charge German machine gun nests because he considered the machine gun to be “a much over-rated weapon" that was unlikely to replace an infantry and cavalry armed with rifles and fixed bayonets. His eschewing of technological innovation found support in an officer corps largely sourced by birthright and riddled with outdated notions of colonialism, battlefield heroics and romanticism in which disdain for the welfare of the lower ranks (especially those conscripted) made perfectly good moral sense. In his book ‘A Social History of The Machine Gun’ (1975) John Ellis pulls no punches:

“Of all the chickens that came home to roost and cackle over the dead on the battlefields of the First World War, none was more raucous than the racialism that had somehow assumed that the white man would be invulnerable to those same weapons that had slaughtered natives in their thousands.”

A sentiment echoed by historical writer Eric Byrd in 2014, though rather less floridly:

“The newfangled contraptions might repel a skirt-wearing native with a bone in his nose; but Englishmen [sic] were made of stronger stuff”. 

Englishmen, Welshmen, Scotsmen and Irishmen, he surely means. Ellis goes on to describe one case where two German machine guns manned by six soldiers mowed down 600 British infantrymen in two hours without incurring a single casualty themselves. Yet, despite incurring such heavy losses as these, there remained, for some time, a steadfast reluctance to increase the quota of machine guns available to each battalion. In an interview in 1925 General Haig still refused to acknowledge the crucial role the machine gun had played in the devastating early successes of the German forces. It is only fair to mention however that, when the Americans joined the allies, they arrogantly ignored British and French advice regarding the prowess of the German machine gunners, finding themselves as historian Edward Lengel puts it, with fixed their bayonets:

“.........................struggling to cut through belts of wire hung with skeletons in tattered French uniforms”.

General Douglas Haig’s private papers from May 11th 1915 reveal a catalogue of tactical errors including insufficient intelligence about newly-strengthened German positions. Intelligence that had been gleaned was not considered seriously enough. Prior bombardment of the German positions was neither intensive enough nor of sufficient duration to have any real impact and ammunition had been poorly manufactured and equipment often failed due to overuse. The paucity of shells and their high level of failures to explode subsequently became front page news on several national newspapers in Britain with the blame falling squarely on government policy leading to local Welsh politician Lloyd George becoming Minister of Munitions.

William David Williams has no grave. His name is included on the memorial at Le Touret which commemorates, among others, another 13,453 British soldiers killed in this sector of the Western Front between October 1914 and September 1915 whose bodies have yet be recovered.

 

Daniel Owen (1899-1916)

The Owen family were the hardest hit by the war in Llanfrothen Parish, suffering the loss of three sons within 16 months. Their father John was a quarryman born in 1857 in Llanfrothen. He was probably employed in one of the adjoining Rhosydd or Croesor quarries which were by far the largest employers in the area. John Owen married twice and had eight children by his first marriage, one of whom he lost in the war, and four children by his second marriage to Anne (born 1865), two of whom were lost. The family appear to be unusually mobile for the time, moving house frequently within the parish as well as having individual members relocate to disparate regions of England and Wales. According to the 1881 census John was living with his first wife at Moelwyn Bank in Croesor with their first two children Henry (born 1879; who became a clerk at the Croesor slate quarry, however, by 1916, the year of the family’s first war casualty, he had moved to Liverpool, England) and Owen (born 1880; died in childhood). The couple had three more children within the next decade; David John (born 1884; became a farm worker and living in Yorkshire, England by 1916), Samuel (born 1887; who later moved to South Wales and died in the war) and Kate (born 1889; living in Llandudno Junction by 1916 and believed to have died there in 1974 aged 84 years).

In 1891 the Owen family are listed as living at Siloam Calvinistic Methodist Chapel House, Llanfrothen with a two-month old second daughter Mary (by 1916 she was living at Ty Capel, Bodfean, on the Llŷn Peninsula). A fifth son, also named Owen, was born in 1894 and by 1916 he was also living in Yorkshire. A third daughter, Ellen (known as Nel) was born in 1895. By 1916 she was living in Cardiff where she died in 1922 aged 27 years. Sometime in 1895-6 John married Anne with whom he had four more children within seven years. William (born 1896) became a gardener; Evan (born 1897) became a farm worker and died in the war, as did Daniel (born 1899). Finally, another daughter Olwen was born in 1903, by which time the family were living at London House in Llanfrothen (since renamed Garreg Wen). However, by 1911 and throughout the war they were living at Llys Brothen in what was then Llanfrothen but since ceded to Penrhyndeudraeth.

Farm worker Daniel Owen was the second man from Llanfrothen Parish and the first son of the Owen family to be lost in the war. He was also likely to have been the youngest to die as there is some doubt as to his real age. According to both the war memorial at Llanfrothen and his grave at Fosse in France, he died aged 19 years. However, census data supplied by his family on two separate occasions indicates he was born in 1899 which would make him 17 years old at time of death. It seems unlikely that his parents would mistake the age of their child by two years on two separate occasions and more plausible that he had lied to the military about his age, a not uncommon practice at the time (indeed, the two youngest Welsh soldiers to have died in the war were only 14 years of age; Richard O’Shay of Newport on May 6th 1917 and Reginald George Lewis of Barry on August 6th 1918). Nevertheless, we know that Daniel Owen joined the 7th Battalion of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers in early 1915. In all, four of the men from Llanfrothen Parish who died in the war spent time with the 7th Battalion.

Welsh Fusiliers (use of the modern term ‘Welch’ was uncommon before 1920) wore a unique feature on their uniform; five overlapping black silk ribbons that ran down their backs starting at the neck. They were seven inches (approximately 18cm) long for ordinary ranks and nine inches (approximately 23cm) for officers, a remnant from the days when British soldiers wore pigtails. The Army Board tried to have the regiment remove the ‘flash’, as it was known, on the grounds that the enemy would be able to identify which regiment the soldiers belonged to. However, the story goes that King George V vetoed the plan, stating:

 "The enemy will never see the backs of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers.”

This was not really an accurate statement. The battalion embarked for Gallipoli, Turkey on May 19th 1915 from Devonport, England, landing at Suvla Bay on August 9th. There they suffered exceptionally heavy losses unsuccessfully trying to capture Constantinople (now Istanbul), reducing the Battalion to a mere 15% of its normal strength and, of the soldiers remaining, many suffered the effects of disease. They retreated and were initially evacuated on December 11th to the Greek island of Moudros and two months later, in February 1916, the battalion regrouped in Alexandria, Egypt.  Their task was to protect the Suez Canal from Turkish attacks coming through the Sinai.

Records show that Daniel was discharged from the army on March 5th 1916, though the reason why is unknown. Perhaps they found out he had lied about his age at enlistment? He was returned to Britain. However, three weeks later, on March 26th, he re-enlisted as a Sapper/Pioneer in the 4th Battalion of the Royal Engineers Special Brigade (regimental number 130586) on ‘short service’ (i.e., for the duration of the war) in Oswestry, England, giving not the address of his parents but a different, Penrhyndeudraeth address, further suggesting that he was lying about his age. He joined his unit on May 9th.

Although the rank of ‘Pioneer’ had existed since the 1700s in the British Army, whole infantry Pioneer Battalions did not exist until 1915. Originally, each infantry company had a ‘Pioneer’ who would go ahead of the company, equipped with an axe, to clear the path through undergrowth. For some reason, they were also the only soldiers permitted to wear a full beard. Pioneer battalions in the First World War had a very different role, i.e., to consolidate and maintain any enemy positions that had been captured. This became necessary during trench warfare because captured German trenches had often been badly damaged and in need of repair and because they now faced the wrong way, having been constructed to accommodate armaments aimed at the British and French lines. Pioneers were armed with both a rifle and a spade (and so wore a badge consisting of a rifle, pick and shovel) and were usually among the first infantrymen to breach the enemy lines. Despite this, fatalities in Pioneer battalions were relatively light compared to combatants. Pioneers had to be extremely fit. According to regulations, each Pioneer was expected to be able to excavate a minimum of 30 cubic feet (8.5 m3) of soil in the first hour.

Daniel was killed in action from gas poisoning on a rain sodden June 28th 1916, a mere three months after re-enlisting and seven weeks after joining his unit. There is a sad irony here; the 4th Battalion of the Royal Engineers being one of the first British units to employ poisonous gas themselves. Nevertheless, even if his military age is the more accurate, it remains that he had experienced two of the most horrifying theatres of war during his teenage years, Gallipoli and the Western Front. His body is buried at Fosse No.10 Communal Cemetery Extension, Sains-en-Gohelle, Pas-de-Calais, France which harbours 471 graves, 256 of which are British.

 

Samuel Owen (1887-1917)

The eighth Llanfrothen parishioner and second son of the Owen family to die was Samuel. Little is known about his life. He appears to have moved to Ferndale in South Wales perhaps, as William David Williams is suspected, to work in the coal mining industry. He then enlisted at Porth, Glamorgan, sometime after December 1915, possibly in March 1916, serving as a Sapper (or military engineer) in the 250th Tunnelling Company of the Royal Engineers (regimental number 155488).

Their aim of these companies was to burrow underneath the German trenches and to place mines directly underneath and in the path of their advance. In order to excavate tunnels more quickly and safely, the British Army prioritised the voluntary enlistment of experienced coal and tin miners, especially in South Wales, who were used to working underground under cramped conditions, many since childhood. By mid-1916 25,000 experienced miners had enlisted, the majority coming from coal mining communities. Some had previously been rejected for combat roles on the grounds of health and age. The work was highly dangerous with numerous risks including tunnel collapse, carbon monoxide poisoning, inadvertent detonation of their mines, being discovered by the enemy and either gassed or forced into combat underground. In addition, the presence of tunnelling companies was disliked by above ground infantrymen because when tunnelling was suspected, it increased the chance of aerial bombardment. There was also the added risk of accidental detonation of explosives underneath friendly forces and, even when controlled explosions were successful, they would randomly shower the air with shrapnel, an event which favoured neither allied nor enemy forces.

The 250th Tunnelling Company was formed in Rouen, France in October 1915 and, in collaboration with a larger contingent of similar tunnelling units from New Zealand and a smaller contingent from Australia, they constructed three tunnels under the Messine Ridge in Belgium (up to 38 metres deep and 600metres long, packed with 435 tonnes of explosives) which they named Petit Bois, Peckham and the largest, Spanbroekmolen. This is now considered the greatest achievement of the allied tunnelling companies. At 3.10am on June 7th 1917 the explosives were detonated creating a noise so powerful it registered on a seismograph in Switzerland, and was heard by David Lloyd George, 240 km away in London. Over 10,000 German troops were killed outright and the German positions were overran by the British in three hours, with a further 7,000 Germans taken prisoner.

Thirty year old Samuel Owen died on June 23rd 1917 almost a year after his half-brother Daniel. He had succumbed to the wounds he had suffered three weeks earlier on June 6th, one day before the excavations he helped construct were detonated. His body is buried at Bailleul Communal Cemetery Extension in Northern France along with 4,236 other war graves of which 3,292 are British. The 'Register of Soldier's Effects' refers to his next of kin as his wife, Jane, but this may be mistaken as there appears to be no record of him ever marrying, either in North or South Wales.

 

Evan Owen (1897-1917)

The ninth member of the Llanfrothen community and the third son of the Owen family to die was Evan, also a farm worker. He was a full sibling to Daniel and a half-sibling to Samuel. Unlike his two brothers Daniel was not in the army but served as a Royal Navy Stoker 2nd Class, (naval number #K43043) aboard HMS Brisk, an Acorn (H) Class Destroyer/Torpedo Boat Lieutenant captained by Lieutenant Algernon Edmund Lyons (a fellow Welshman born at Kilvrough, near Swansea, Wales; after 1922 he became known as Penrice-Lyons) and launched in 1910 at Clydebank in Scotland.

During his time afloat Evan Owen can be proud to have played an honourable role in what is considered to be one of the most distasteful and disgraceful episodes in a war which was short on neither. The story involved a collision between two ships, the SS Darro and the SS Mendi,  early morning on February 21st 1917, 11.3 nautical miles south to southwest of Catherine’s Point on the Isle of Wight. The SS Darro was a cargo ship of slightly less than 10,000 tonnes which regularly carried foodstuffs and mail between Argentina and Britain. After berthing at Le Havre, France, it was bound for Falmouth, England with a cargo of frozen meat and a crew of 143 under the captaincy of Henry Winchester Stump. The SS Mendi was a much smaller steamship of less than 4,000 tonnes owned by the British and African Steam Navigation Company. It normally plied between Liverpool and West Africa (being named after a tribal group in Sierra Leone) but had been chartered by the British government a few months earlier to ferry troops. Captained by Henry Arthur Yardley the SS Mendi was en route from Plymouth, England to Le Havre carrying 969 people; 802 volunteers from the South African Native Labour Contingent (SANLC) who had boarded at Cape Town 38 days earlier (most of whom had never been on a ship of any kind before), five officers, 17 non-commissioned officers and 56 other military officials. A crew of 89 were also aboard.

Because of the threat posed by German naval ships and submarines both ships took protective measures; SS Mendi was shadowed by HMS Brisk while the SS Darro sailed an unpredictable zig-zag course. Conditions were very foggy and visibility poor so the SS Mendi and HMS Brisk travelled very slowly, the two ships not always visible to each other, with the SS Mendi sounding its horn at one minute intervals in line with maritime regulations. In contrast, and with complete disregard to regulations, the SS Darro was travelling at its full speed without sounding its horn. At 4.57am the lookout on the SS Mendi, Fourth Officer Hubert Frank Trapnell, spotted the SS Darro at a distance of only 60 metres travelling on a collision course to starboard, making no attempt to either slow down or alter course. Second Officer H. Raine immediately ordered the ship full astern but it was too late. The SS Darro hit the SS Mendi almost at right angles causing a six metre tall vertical gash from keel to deck. Worse, the bulkhead separating numbers 1 and 2 holds was ruptured causing icy-cold water to flood into an area where an estimated 140 SANLC volunteers were sleeping, drowning them all instantly. The Mendi was pushed over sideways, submerging all the lifeboats on one side though, incredibly, it transpired later that there were only ever enough places in the ship’s complement of lifeboats for 298 people. The SS Mendi took less than 30 minutes to sink completely. Those remaining alive found themselves in icy water with visibility reduced to only a couple of metres. Of the 649 who perished, 626 were SANLC volunteers, the majority unable to swim.

The SANLC members had not volunteered to fight as infantrymen because they were not allowed to. It was a stipulation of the South African government that only white South African volunteers be trained in the use of firearms and explosives, lest any black volunteers later use their military skills to overthrow the government. Instead, they were expected to support the war effort by working in quarries, cutting timber, building and repairing roads and railway lines and loading and unloading munitions and supplies from ships.

Although they were not allowed to bear arms, this did not mean SANLC volunteers did not serve on the battlefield. The British cemetery at Arques-la-Bataille, France, for example, includes the graves of 333 SANLC volunteers who were killed in battle, unarmed. On their return to South Africa white volunteers were awarded medals and given parcels of farmland from which they could make a living and build a government subsidised home. Black volunteers, despite similar experiences and sacrifices, were rewarded with no medals and no land, but were each given a bicycle for which, no doubt, they were expected to be grateful. One can only look back with hindsight and dismay as to the short-sightedness of the South African government. For, had they been allowed to serve alongside their white colleagues, there is little doubt that the SANLC volunteers would have fought with the same degree of bravery. This view is borne out by eyewitness reports from the crew of the HMS Brisk and other ships nearby that came to render aid to the SS Mendi. At the subsequent Maritime Board of Inquiry they spoke unanimously of the bravery and courage of the surviving SANLC volunteers in helping the rescue efforts.

Their African-American counterparts, such as those of the 369th New York Infantry, fared little better. Many had volunteered from the Deep South in an effort to prove their worth as loyal citizens, on the understanding that measures would be put in place on their return to improve their lot in the social hierarchy. However, on arrival in Europe they soon found themselves unattached from US forces and put under French command. They too demonstrated their bravery. Unlike the SANLC men they were armed and their unit recaptured the French town of Sechault from the Germans, only to find themselves cut off from the allies by German forces. Though low on food and ammunition, they nevertheless managed to remain fighting for a whole week, holding onto the town, until help arrived, earning them the nicknames ‘The Harlem Hellfighters’ and ‘The Lost Battalion’. For their service to France the government awarded every member of the regiment the Croix de Guerre and it is said that in return, French culture absorbed the jazz that they had played for recreation. It seems the French definitely got the best deal.

In all, more than four million non-white soldiers fought for the allies in the war; one and a half million came from the Indian subcontinent and two million were recruited from the various British and French African colonies. Indian battalions played a particularly pivotal role in all the Middle Eastern theatres. It is easy to forget, then, that a Hindu Indian from the tropical south of the country fighting in the Egyptian desert would be just as much out of their geographical and cultural depth as would a Welshman from Merionethshire. The multiracial nature of the British and French forces was in stark contrast to the opposing Germans, so much so that the German sociologist Max Weber disparaged them as comprised of “niggers, Gurkhas, and the barbarians of the world.” Nevertheless, there was some unease in Britain about the presence of non-European soldiers because, paradoxically, the success of the war effort depended to no small extent on the effectiveness of non-white soldiers in killing white Europeans, thus upsetting the strict racial hierarchies on which the Empire was built.

HMS Brisk was the first ship upon the scene of the collision and immediately lowered all of its lifeboats, rescuing 137 of the Mendi’s passengers and crew from the water, without regard to race. Similarly, the nearby cargo ship SS Sandsend managed to pick up 23 black survivors (and later to lose 3 men itself after being torpedoed off Cork, Ireland the following September). But this is what renders the event distasteful and disgraceful: not just the wanton stupidity of the SS Darro having ignored maritime regulations and causing such a catastrophe, but the fact that having ascertained that they had suffered only minor damage themselves Captain Stump callously ignored the fate of the Mendi and immediately steamed away from the scene. No attempt was made to communicate with the stricken vessel and Captain Stump waited a full three minutes before informing HMS Brisk that it was his ship that had collided with the SS Mendi. The SS Darro released none of its own lifeboats but two lifeboats from the SS Mendi made it to the SS Darro. The first,  filled with white officers and crew, arrived at about 5.50am. This was the only rescue the SS Darro made. When the second lifeboat, filled with SANLC volunteers, pulled alongside ten minutes later Captain Stump ordered the crew to ignore their cries for help. At 6.45am the SS Darro continued on her way to Falmouth at a reduced speed with her horn sounding while HMS Brisk had her lifeboats continue the search for survivors until 9.00am before having them return, though the ship continued to cruise the area afterward for several more hours.

Two reasons as to why Captain Stump acted as he did have been suggested. The first is that he panicked. This seems unlikely, as he must surely have been aware that he would be unable to cover up a disaster of this magnitude, witnessed by a Royal Navy destroyer and a merchant vessel. And it does not explain why he didn’t come to his senses and return to the scene of the collision to help with the search for survivors. The second, suggested by a number of people, including those who knew Stump personally, was that he and his officers would have been uncomfortable having black men on board their ship, regardless of the circumstances. Whichever the case, a Board of Enquiry identified Captain Stump as being wholly responsible for the collision. He was punished by having his Captain’s licence suspended for one year. The families of the SANLC volunteers received no formal notification as to how their relatives had died, or any monetary compensation. Not even an apology from the company that operated the SS Darro.

After their exemplary actions in the rescue of the SS Mendi survivors it seems distinctly unjust that only eight months later HMS Brisk was to experience a similar fateful event. On October 2nd 1917, German submarine U-79, a relatively new vessel displacing 759 tonnes and carrying a crew of thirty-two, was patrolling the waters and laying mines around Rathlin Island off the coast of Northern Ireland. Their goal was to hinder the passage of merchant conveys from the USA to Britain. The sea was calm, Kapitänleutnant Otto Rohrbeck (who coincidentally had taken command of U-79 on the same day the SS Mendi was sunk) reporting in his log a “light westerly breeze is lifting early morning mist over calm waters.” Convoy HH24, inbound from the USA loaded with cotton, alcohol and steel, was being escorted by HMS Brisk and HMS Drake, a 14,000 tonne armoured cruiser captained by S. H. Radcliffe and one of the fastest cruisers in the world at that time. As the convoy steamed past the north-west tip of the island, U-79 sighted HMS Drake and fired one of her four 50cm torpedoes, managing a direct hit. The resulting explosion killed 19 seamen outright though the ship remained afloat. The entire convey then dispersed, as was normal practice in order to reduce the possibility of two ships being hit in quick succession. Soon afterward, however, U-79 either fired another torpedo at the 1,815 tonne merchant ship S.S. Lugano, or it had hit one of U-79’s mines, ripping a large hole in her starboard side. She sank rapidly, though no lives were lost.

Torpedoing an armoured cruiser and sinking a merchant ship on the same morning would have been a notable occasion even for a successful naval officer such as Kapitänleutnant Rohrbeck who, within the sixteen months he commanded U-boats, sunk a total of 11 ships and damaged two others. There is some doubt, therefore, whether the third explosion that subsequently ripped the bow off HMS Brisk 1.5 nautical miles south-west of Bull Point, County Antrim, was due to a mine laid by or a torpedo fired from U-79. A mine is considered by most experts to have been the cause. Surely few captains would have been lucky enough to torpedo one of the fastest cruisers in the world, a modern destroyer and a merchant ship within a few hours? Whatever the case, 32 of the crew of HMS Brisk died; 31 instantly and one critically injured, who died within a month. Twenty-year old Evan Owen of Llanfrothen was one of those who died instantly, alongside his local Welsh compatriot William Ewart Williams from Caernarfon. Evan Owen’s body was never recovered and, in addition to the Llanfrothen war memorial, he is commemorated at the Plymouth Naval Memorial.

As reported in the next edition of the Rathlin Island newspaper:

“...the islanders watching all this in amazement from the cliffs and the settlement at Church Bay, the mutilated silhouette of the Brisk was being approached by two of the many armed trawlers on hire to the Admiralty, ‘Seaton’ and ‘Vale of Lennox’.”

The stern section of HMS Brisk was towed into Derry. She was repaired and continued service until 1921 when she was scrapped. U-79 sank only one more ship after the encounter off the Northern Ireland coast. A mine she laid sank a smaller 205 tonne ship three weeks later. On November 21st 1918 she was surrendered to the allies at Harwich, England and given to the French Navy who renamed her Victor Reveille. She too was scrapped, in 1935.