Researching your military ancestors and local heroes from WW1.
Every Armistice Day, Magor Square is packed with dignitaries, villagers and medal adorned veterans as we rightly pay our respects to those who gave their lives in two world wars. As part of the often moving ceremony we promise that “we shall remember them”. But who are we remembering? As a genealogist I spend my time helping people to discover their family stories. Yet, for years, I have walked past the names carved in stone, on my way to the shops, post-office or pub, and know nothing about the men who sacrificed their lives. It is time to hear their stories. Here is the first name on the monument.
William Attwell (1887-1916)
Pte. 78040 51st Field Ambulance, Royal Army Medical Corps. Killed in Action 07 July 1916, at the Battle of the Somme, aged 28. Buried in Gordon Dump Cemetery, Ovillers-La Boisselle, Somme, France.
William’s story is personally poignant as he died 3 days before my great uncle in the same battle, and I have unknowingly visited the area where he died and the graveyard where he was buried.
The Cross Keys boy
William was actually from Cross Keys but had married an Undy girl. He was born on 03 Feb 1887 the son of Francis ATTWELL, a miner, and his wife Margaret (nee KENVYN). William was the second of their five children. He grew up in Wattsville and went to Waunfawr School, Cross Keys. Sadly, his father Frank died in 1897, when William was aged 10. For some reason, after his father had died his mother decided to baptise her children all at once. So at the age of 11, William and three of his siblings were baptised together in Risca church on 29 Jan 1899. At the age of 12 William left school to work in the coal mines, as his elder brother David had done. Even more tragedy struck the family when his younger brother Albert died aged 9, in 1901. The widowed Margaret and her four remaining children then lived in Bright Street, Cross Keys.
William marries an Undy girl
On 27 Dec 1909, William married Cissie Susannah LEONARD at Undy parish church. He was 22 and she 20. Cissie was the daughter of Thomas Frederick LEONARD and his wife Mary Ann (nee WATKINS). The Leonard family lived on the Undy coast at Wharf Cottage (now called Penyclawdd), next to Chapel Farm. There Thomas worked as a fisherman, like his father before him. It seems that Cissie already had a daughter Henrietta Mary HARRIS who was born in 1906 who would later be adopted by William.
The 1911 census recorded William and Cissie lived in Waunfawr Terrace, next to his old school, and two streets away from his mother and siblings in Bright Street. His mother had remarried in 1902 to William WYATT, a miner from Llantrisant, Glamorgan. Henrietta was with Cissie’s parents in Wharf Cottage, Undy.
A disturbance over some corned beef
The relationship between step-father and step-son was not all smooth sailing. Only days after the 1911 census was taken, William ATTWELL stood in the dock at Newport Police Court, summoned by his step-father for assaulting him. William WYATT said that the unprovoked disturbance was over some corned beef, and that his step-son had assaulting him violently, leaving him with a bloodied face and two black eyes. William ATTWELL pleaded guilty ‘under provocation’ and his version of the story was slightly different. He told the court that his step-father had come home drunk and his mother had run round to fetch him for help. William went with his mother to her house and apparently things quietened down. William then left but when was walking past the house later, he saw his mother and step-father in a struggle. William entered the house and struck his step-father. He would not leave his mother alone and slept at her house. The court told William that he had no right to enter the house and he was fined £3 for the assault.
William in WW1
By the time WW1 broke out in 1914, William’s older brother David had also died. When William enlisted on 02 Nov 1915, he gave his address as The Causeway, Undy; presumably he meant Wharf Cottage. By now he was aged 28.
His military medical recorded him as standing 5’ 6” (1.7m) tall and weighing 9 stone (57 Kg). He had a scar on the little finger of his right hand. He was based in the UK at first but on 15 March 1916 he sailed for France aboard the SS Queen Alexandria from Southampton. The ship arrived at Rouen the following day and within a week, he was posted to the 51st Field Ambulance. Within four months he had died.
World War One: two stretcher bearers removing a wounded man under fire. Wash painting, c. 1916. Credit: Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
51st Field Ambulance
A Field Ambulance was a mobile medical unit that served in the front line (and not a vehicle!). William’s unit would have formed an evacuation chain that carried casualties from the battle field, first to Regimental Aid Posts through Bearer Relay Posts to Advanced Dressing Stations and then onto the Main Dressing Station. Technically, each unit would be responsible for about 150 casualties, but usually had to deal with a lot more.
Being a member of the RAMC required tremendous courage. William must have seen more than his fair share of horrific injuries and terrified men in the trenches, as these extracts from ‘Twenty Years After the Battlefields of 1914-18, Then and Now (Supplementary Volume)’ show:
‘In the night a cry: “Stretcher bearers wanted! Volunteers!” You crawl through the trenches, and find a group of men hit in a traverse, and apply field-dressings, and tourniquets – rough-and-ready work under fire. The first consideration is: to get them out. Going up with the empty stretcher, with shells “plonking” over and machine guns and shrapnel spraying the trenches, you feel shivery and shaky; but immediately you get your man on board you are steady as a rock…
‘… The procession moves off, four men to a stretcher, with four miles to go, knee-deep in mud most of the way. When the shells pitch over in salvoes you see bearers put the stretcher down and cover the wounded man with their own bodies…’
Mametz Wood
William’s unit was attached to the 17th (Northern) Division who were part of the famous attack on Mametz Wood alongside the 38th (Welsh) Division. Mametz was part of the Battle of Albert, in the Somme (01 July – 13 July 1916). The first day of the battle alone saw 58,000 British casualties.
At 2 a.m. on 07 Jul 1916, the 17th and 38th Divisions attacked towards Mametz and Contalmaison but the German counter attack pushed them back. Advancing reinforcements were hit by machine gun fire from Mametz Wood. Somewhere amongst all of mayhem, William was killed.
He was buried in Gordon Dump Cemetery, 2km north east of Albert. It is not clear whether he was one of those 95 men buried there after the battle or whether he was moved there along with about 1600 other men after the Armistice.
William’s belongings were sent to his widow, Cissie, at Wharf Cottage, Undy. She received a war pension of 15 shillings per week from January 1919.
In 1922 Cissie received William’s British, War and Victory medals and by this time she had married Ernest TAYLOR. They lived in North Road, Risca. Cissie died in 1969 at the age of 79. His adopted daughter Henrietta Mary HARRIS died in Risca in 1992.
Next November, when the last post plays in Magor Square, William will no longer be just a name carved on a village memorial.