Episode 1 Welsh Memories of World War I

This programme contains some scenes which some viewers may find upsetting.

The generation of Welshmen who fought in the First World War

is now long gone.

The old soldiers have all passed away.

What survives is their first-hand testimony,

along with that of the women and children they left behind,

recorded in interviews

filmed over the last decades of the 20th century.

I could go shopping and forgot to bring something,

it only happened yesterday, but I don't forget

what happened in World War I and the things that I saw.

This is the story of The Great War, in the words of the Welsh men

and women who lived through it.

I'm trying to forget the First World War,

and all I did and what happened.

I'm sorry for those that I destroyed, but I had to do it.

It was either them or me.

1914, and the people of Wales were enjoying their August Bank Holiday.

I can remember that we were all very excited,

because we were going on a Sunday school trip to Llandudno.

But, unfortunately, in the middle of the morning, someone came up

from the railway station to tell my father,

who was the minister, and organising the trip, that there would be

no excursions for anybody, because the war had broken out.

The national mood was largely one of excitement.

While there was no compulsory conscription, at first,

young lads across Wales were encouraged to volunteer.

Some of the most enthusiastic cheerleaders urging them on

were men of the cloth.

In North Wales, the most notable was Reverend John Williams Brynsiencyn,

a staunch ally of Chancellor of the Exchequer,

David Lloyd George.

Everyone was expected to play their part in the war effort.

Well, men who were working on the railways, or in the mines,

after they finished work, they'd be going out

and having a drink in the evening and so on.

And, of course, they'd be of army age.

The woman who didn't know them would shout and say,

"Why don't you go to the Army? Go, go and fight for your country."

You used to come in the pub to hide out of the way, sometimes.

BOOTS MARCH

The only young man that I can remember going to war

was a young son of the caretaker's of the chapel,

who lived in the house adjoining the chapel.

I remember we were skating on a slide in the square in Llanllechid

and he was skating with me

and saying that "Tomorrow, I'm going to Wrexham to join up."

And he went. He must've been about 18, 17.

And he went the next day and he never came back.

We wanted to fight the Germans.

That was the main thing, to get at the Germans. I don't know why.

And we went to war full of it, you know...

..with no knowledge at all of what it would be like, or...

..fighting of any sort.

We all had the idea in our head

that we was fighting a war to end all wars.

And that's how we fought - too vigorously.

I don't mean to say we weren't patriotic,

but that was uppermost in our mind.

And everyone had in mind the idea that

we was fighting a war to end all wars.

I was working in the colliery.

And there were people joining up, you know, and I thought, "Oh, well."

My brother-in-law, we discussed it. And we decided to join up.

We thought, well, bit of a holiday, maybe. That's what we thought.

We'll beat the Germans... in about six months.

I said, "we thought."

I'd gone down to the Drill Hall to enlist.

We lived near the Drill Hall, and my mother heard of it,

and she went down, and she told the instructor that I was under age.

So, he wouldn't take me on.

So, it went on a bit longer, couple months longer,

until the beginning of 15, and...

..my mother and I had a bit of a tiff.

I said, "I'm going to join the Army, don't call me in the morning."

273,000 Welshmen took part in the war.

Welsh soldiers were initially accommodated in seaside resorts,

like Rhyl and Llandudno, before being sent

to the South of England, from where they would cross the Channel.

A very curious incident happened at Southampton,

the evening before we embarked on active service.

I remember three of us, three bosom pals, going to a phrenologist.

A renowned phrenologist at that.

And I remember spending the last ten shillings of English money

that I had in my possession.

So, I asked him, "How long is this war going to last?"

I was under the impression six months.

He said, "Oh, my dear man.

"It's 1914.

"I'll speak to you, probably, 1919," he said like that.

Well, that rocked my sails terrible.

He said, "Have you got another thing that you'd like to ask?"

I said, "Yes. After being through it all, are we going to return?"

And he hesitated a little and said,

"The first tour, they will not return.

"But you will return," he said.

"You'll go to a hospital and you'll go through the tribulations of war,

"but you'll come back safely."

Well, I was the only one that came back out of three.

I was billeted in empty houses in Broadstairs.

And there were six of us in one room.

We left there on a Thursday night...

for Dover.

And we went out to France. Sunday, we were in the trenches.

Ordinary Welsh lads were about to experience a conflict

unlike any in history.

While previous wars had hinged on rapid movement,

the First World War quickly became a static engagement.

Both sides dug into entrenched positions along a front line

that stretched from Belgium down to Switzerland.

The battlefield was hundreds of miles long,

but often just a few hundred yards wide.

The conditions were terrible.

All you could see lying about you was...

..was shot-up guns and...

..and empty...ammunition boxes,

and dead horses, and...

..dead...

..dead soldiers.

Hundreds...hundreds of dead...

dead soldiers.

Four of the boys that were with me in that room on the Thursday,

were killed on the Sunday.

Ifan Gruffydd,

who hailed from a village called Paradwys - Paradise - in Anglesey,

recalled the hell of living in the constant shadow of death.

Snipers weren't the only enemy that Welsh soldiers faced.

At night-time, you'd wake up at some time in the night...

..a rat nibbling at your lobes.

It was always the ears.

Well, there were rats as big as rabbits, you know.

They were terrific.

And, of course, the dead bodies and everything they had, the rats.

They had everything.

And there was enormous rats.

A sergeant had the lobe of his ear...

..half bitten off, clean.

Very, very slovenly and ugly. There were no meals, nothing regular.

Everything was odd chance.

And we were never instructed

on what to do or how to do it.

We had to find out everything ourselves.

Surviving on meagre rations, soldiers valued the food parcels

they received from their families back home.

My mother used to save from the rations and make a cake,

and send a parcel to my father,

which needed a lot of careful packing,

because it had to be put in linen,

because it had to go a long way.

And I can remember seeing her writing his name, and rank,

and number in bold letters on the parcel.

The comradeship between the men was excellent.

For instance, if anybody had a parcel...

..and a parcel with something to eat, the parcel would be opened

immediately and shared out, as far as it would go.

I used to do the same with cigarettes. Or tobacco. Share.

As well as food and cigarettes,

soldiers in the trenches were given a daily ration of rum.

The real purpose of rum, from my experience,

was in the night to keep the chill out of your tummy,

stop you getting chill in your tummy, and...

One episode...

..I remember was that the colonel and his pal stole a jar of rum.

And they drank so much of it that they regurgitated and they died.

I always remember seeing them. They were like marble. White.

It could be cruel stuff.

The first shock of people being killed only lasts

for about three or four days.

You could get used to the filth of your body.

Not having a clean change for months on end.

And you can even get used to that.

And you can even get used to hunger.

And, definitely, you could get used to seeing people

being killed round about you.

MACHINE GUN FIRE

One of my pals,

he caught a burst of machine gun bullets

in the tummy.

Of course, he was killed.

And I can well remember

seeing he'd got webbing equipment.

And he was badly wounded.

I gave him a drink of water, and as he was drinking the water,

you could see the water coming out...

through his intestines.

Donovan from Cardiff

was cut across here,

his inside was out.

And he'd just...

..seen his 20th birthday,

and the last words I heard him say,

"If my mother could see me now..."

And then I turned around, I shouted, "Brewster!

"Brewster," I said, "Come here."

And, of course, mortification had set in.

And I think he died in a very, very short time.

Most casualties at the front were not killed or wounded by bullets,

but by the devastating explosive power of mortars and shells.

Well, now, then, this particular night,

we were laid down in this hut, sitting down in our battle order.

And two shells were dropped outside that hut.

I think there were about 28 killed in that hut.

And the order was that everybody get out -

the sergeant and the officer, all out.

And I happened to be by one or two of my friends

who were with me in Broadstairs -

a fellow called Frank Mellor and another one called Alf Haslock.

Alf Haslock was killed without a murmur.

But Frank Mellor was badly wounded - I don't know where,

because it was in the dark.

And when I was ordered out, Frank Mellor was hanging onto me,

"You're not going to leave me here."

And I HAD to leave him there.

I had to...

I had to leave him there.

And he must have died there.

That affected me very much indeed.

Losing those two fellows affected me -

in fact, it affected me all my life.

SHELL WHISTLES

We had a very bad shelling.

And sometimes we'd chance carrying a Red Cross flag.

You'd go out with a couple of sandbags

and you'd pick up and arm here, a heart there,

a head there...

a torso somewhere else. God knows what.

That's what you had to do.

Those are the horrible things that...

I don't want to talk about.

As Welsh soldiers tried to come to terms

with the horrific deaths of their friends,

their commanding officers were doing all they could

to prepare them for the reality of inflicting death upon the enemy.

Well, our major said,

"You go! You go!

"And kill them.

"Get them in the heart, in the belly, in the groin.

"Make sure! It's your enemy!

"Make sure of it.

"It's your enemy. Make sure of it.

"It's your enemy.

"And come back," he said.

"Come back."

You must remember,

if you went into a trench and...

took a few prisoners, perhaps - and wounded a few...

..you daren't move on and leave a half German there...

..and get shot in the back.

With enough life in him to draw his Luger and shoot you.

You had to fill him.

That's war.

They were shouting, "Mercy! Kamerad!"

One of our blokes had a Mills' bomb, pulled the pin out

threw it down, bump-bump-bump down the steps,

exploded,

and silence. It killed every one of 'em.

Every one of the Germans there that were in that dugout then was killed.

I'd got to kill. I'd got to kill.

One officer's behind us, "If you won't do it, we'll get it ourself."

And I'd got to kill here - I don't know how many,

lots and lots and lots, solid for three hours.

Yes, I did.

I killed a lot. I'd got to do it.

I'd got to be a murderer.

BIRDS SING

One battle above all

has come to symbolise the bravery and sacrifice of Welsh soldiers

in the First World War.

It came in 1916, when, after two years of deadlock,

the Allies planned to break through the enemy lines,

with a major offensive in the Somme.

The job of attacking German troops dug in at Mametz Wood

was given to the soldiers of the 38th Welsh Division.

They'd been marching for days to reach the battlefield.

Being a signaller,

I had a little bit of knowledge of possibly where we were going.

You have to, you acquire that knowledge.

So, I didn't know about the Somme, but we were going south.

We were singing the old war songs, you know?

Long Way To Tipperary, and...

similar, like that.

Oh, it were agony.

And when we'd have our ten minutes fall out every hour,

when you start to march again, everybody'd be...

..trotting, you know, to get their feet back into trim again.

And they shot us straight into Mametz from there.

We was dog tired going in. It was a shambles.

The Welsh Division was composed almost entirely

of inexperienced soldiers,

who'd volunteered following the outbreak of war.

At Mametz,

they got ready to face the crack troops

of the Prussian Lehr Regiment.

Your battle order was haversack on the back,

holding iron rations,

one dressing and a cape - the waterproof cape,

or you could use it as a bivouac or a groundsheet,

or it was eventually a coffin, if you wanted it.

The soldiers of the Welsh Division were told by their officers

that, in order to reach Mametz wood,

they would have to advance uphill, over 1,000 yards of open ground.

He gave us a bit of a lecture.

He went along telling us, "Whatever happens, don't stop -

even if it's your brother, don't stop for him."

Because they were anticipating so much casualties that...

everybody would be required when we got to the wood.

You know, not to stop to look to anybody.

So they was expecting quite a few casualties.

We were going to go over the top

and the officer was walking up and down the trench there,

and, of course, he was boozed up with rum,

and he was saying, "Ten minutes...

"Nine minutes...

"Eight minutes..."

When the order came, about quarter to five,

"Number one wave - over!"

It was synchronised, along with the NCOs responsible,

and over I went in the first wave.

Advancing over open ground,

the Welsh soldiers were easy targets for German machine-gunners

positioned ahead and to the right of them.

Oh, they allowed us to come -

it was very clever of them...

well, I wouldn't say clever -

it's what WE would have done.

They let us come, say...

about quarter of a mile, say.

About that. Before they started peppering us.

And by God, they didn't half pepper us, too.

I remember one man,

he was an old rugby international forward.

Sergeant - Company Sergeant Major Dick Thomas.

From Mountain Ash.

He was a company sergeant major in the Cardiff City Battalion.

And he was a big, huge man.

Lying down in front of me, not far in front of me,

and he got up on his knees -

and two hands, you know, and knees on the ground,

And went down, head down to the ground,

killed like that.

Just in front of me.

And I hid behind him all day.

It took four attempts over two days, with heavy casualties,

before Welsh soldiers finally reached Mametz Wood.

Once there, they faced the task of attacking German troops

dug in deep among the ruined trees.

I went through into the wood, up to the edge of the wood.

And when I looked into the wood,

it was all demolished.

Branches down, trunks stripped,

trunks lying down, stumps on the ground.

But the undergrowth was terrific.

The undergrowth was terrific, it was a devil of a job to get through.

Five of the seven battalions attacking the woods

had lost commanding officers,

which only complicated the already-difficult task

of clearing the wood of enemy troops.

They wouldn't stand and fight,

they'd retreat and they'd hold, and we'd hold a bit,

then the officers would say to attack,

then you'd shove 'em back a bit further.

Oh, I can't describe it -

you know...I don't WANT to describe it, anyhow.

Five days after the Allies had started their attack,

Mametz Wood was finally taken.

Almost 4,000 soldiers of the Welsh Division

were wounded, missing or dead.

In nearby High Wood,

the Royal Welch Fusiliers sustained another 249 casualties.

The wood itself was littered with dead bodies of both sides.

And wounded.

It was a terrible battle.

And it's... I will remember that as long as I live.

Because I lost a lot of my friends.

The war was still only at its halfway point.

More than two years of bloodshed still lay ahead.