A Soldier

There was an article in last week’s newspaper that caught my attention.

The Oklahoman, Friday, January 17, 2014:  "Oklahoma soldier’s remains return to state".  

After reading  the article, I thought about my great-uncle, David Morgan Richards, my Welsh grandmother’s brother.  He died in France, during the Great War, and is buried there.  My aunt and uncle - a nephew of David - made a trip to France a number of years ago to see the grave.  The story of how that came about is interesting and I hope I get it straight.  If I don’t, Mom will let me know and I’ll edit this article.

About 15 years ago, a fella from Wales went to the cemetery in France.  He was just travelling and while in the cemetery was looking for Welsh soldiers buried there.  He found Uncle David’s marker and took photos.  When he returned to Newport, Wales, he posted in the newspaper about the name and photos and was able to make contact with my aunt and uncle to give them the photos of the marker.  A few years later, they made the trip themselves - well over 70 years since David’s death and the first time any of the family had been there. 

David Morgan Richards was born in Treorchy, Wales, the 18th of November 1893.  Treorchy was the birthplace of all four children of John and Maggie Richards. 

Margaret "Maggie" Evans and John D Richards 

Annie Mary, Tom Euroswydd, Lilian Afanwy, David Morgan

John and Maggie eventually returned to John’s “hometown”, Llanafan, much farther west in the country.  David was an apprentice carpenter; his father, John, a master carpenter in house building. 

On the 1911 Welsh census, John and 17-year-old David are working in Treorchy, boarding with a family that is probably related.  That’s usually a good Welsh joke - nearly everyone is related! [It’s just a matter of figuring out how.]  Maggie and the girls, Annie Mary and Lilian, and son, Tom Euroswydd, were living in the stone cottage in Cardiganshire.

Along came The Great War.

standing: my grandmother Lilian, great grandfather John, 

great uncle David, great aunt Annie Mary "Lal"

seated: great uncle Euros, great grandmother Maggie

As you can see, David was a Very Handsome Fellow.  When he entered the service in December of 1914, he was engaged to a girl named Maggie.  The photo below is from July 1915, France.  

David is on the right, in uniform, without cap.  

The full uniform photo 

of David is dated August 1917.  

In November of 1917, David died two days after his 24th birthday.

Here is his obituary from a Cardiganshire newspaper, 1917

Sapper D M Richards, R[oyal] E[ngineers], was killed in France by a piece of shell on November 20th, while working on a concrete gun emplacement.  

He was born at 74 High Street, Treorchy, twenty-four years ago, within 2 days of the date of his death.  He was educated at the Treorchy school and Higher Grade, Pentre, and was for some years at Llanfan school.  At the age of fourteen years he went as a booking clerk to Treorchy T V R, and after 3 years served 3 years apprenticeship with Mr Alban Richards, contractor, Ton Pentre, as carpenter.  Before enlisting he was working with King and Davies, Marlborough road, Newport.  

He joined the R E at Christmas following the outbreak of hostilities in August and after training at Porthcawl, Abergavenny and Winchester went to France on November 27, 1915.  He went through many a hard night including Mametz Wood and Pilkem, and served 12 months in Belgium on the Ypres Canal.  

His parents now reside at the old home at "Bontfach", Llanafan.  In a letter to Mrs Richards, Liet. Doyle says that Sapper Richards was hit by a splinter from a shell whilst on duty.  He was most concientious at his work and his death cast a gloom over the whole company.  

The funeral took place at Erquinghem Cemetery (British) on Wednesday, 21st November.  Second Lieut. Daman, who was with Sapper Richards when he was killed, writes: - "your son was working on a concrete machine gun emplacement behind our support lines.  The Corporal in charge of the building of the emplacement was there and I started to give instructions.  I asked for a foot rule which your son handed to me.  About a minute afterwards the shell came along.  For a second I thought we were all alright, but your son suddenly ran to me with his hand on his side and said quite quietly, "I'm hit, Sir." and fell down at my feet.  

I sent immediately to the R A M C Dressing Station, which was quite near, and meanwhile dressed the wound.  The doctor shortly after came along, but he saw at a glance that your son was dead.  He was unconscious thirty seconds after being hit and must have expired within 3 minutes.  He felt absolutely no pain.  The wound was a small one in the right side about 10 inches from the underside of the shoulder." 

[eliminating one brief paragraph]  Second Lieut. A F Thomas in a letter says that David was buried by a Welsh Nonconformist minister and nearly all the old boys of the section and two officers of the company attended.

David was buried in Erquinghem-Lys Cemetery, which has this information on the Internet:

ERQUINGHEM-LYS CHURCHYARD EXTENSION, France, Nord.  

The village of Erquinghem-Lys is situated approximately 1.5 kilometres west of Armentieres. Take the D945 from Armentieres toward the centre of Erquinghem-Lys and then turn right immediately before the Town Hall. The cemetery is 50 metres along this road on the right hand side.

The village of Erquinghem-Lys was occupied by German forces early in October 1914, and taken by the 1st Somerset Light Infantry on 16 October. It remained in Allied hands until 10 April 1918, when the 101st Infantry Brigade and the 1st/4th Duke of Wellington's, after a stubborn defence, evacuated the village during the great German offensive. The village was finally retaken in September 1918. 

The earliest Commonwealth burials were made in two places in the churchyard itself, in October 1914 - January 1915, but these 27 graves were moved into the extension (Plot II, Row G, and Plot III, Row G) in 1925, the churchyard being closed for burials. The extension was begun in April 1915 and used by units and field ambulances until April 1918. It was continued down to the stream by the Germans (who also used the churchyard) in the summer of 1918, and in September and October 1918, it was used again for some Commonwealth burials. 

The extension now contains 558 Commonwealth burials of the First World War (eight of them unidentified) and 130 German burials. One unidentified Russian servicemen is also buried in the extension.

You can Google "Erquinghem cemetery France" for a lot of images, including the cemetery plan.

82588  Sapper / D M Richards / Royal Engineers / 20th November 1917 Age 24

My uncle has on display in his home the medals that were given to the family for David’s service, along with a letter:

R[oyal] E[ngineers] Record Office, Chatham, 23.12.21  [23 Dec 1921]

Sir,

I am directed to transmit to you the accompanying British War and Victory Medals which would have been conferred upon No 82588 D M Richards, R E, had he lived, in memory of his services with the British Forces during the Great War.

-In forwarding the Decoration I am commanded by the King to assure you of His Majesty's high appreciation of the services rendered.

-I am to request that you will be so good as to acknowledge the receipt of the Decoration on the attached form.

-I am Your obedient Servant, (can't read signature), Colonel, y_ Records R E

-Mr J D Richards, Crosswood  [David’s father]

Do you realize that this August it will be 100 years since that war began?  I think I need to read Barbara Tuchman’s “The Guns of August”.

Links:

from obituary: Mametz Wood

from Wikipedia: Battle of Pilckem Ridge, 31 July - 2 August 1917, the opening attack of the Third Battle of Ypres

from Internet:  Battle of Pilkem, 31 July - 2 August 1917

Books Again . . .

I decided against keeping Mrs Aldrich after all.  I read it through.  I love some of her passages that describe daily life.  Some authors tend to over-do a description and it drags on and on.  She gives you enough information to easily picture it, without wishing that she’d move on to something else.  So, I decided that it’s someone else’s turn to love those passages and put it in the sack for the Friends of the Library Sale.  That happens next month and you can read about it here.

Speaking of links, there are a lot of them in this article.  That’s as close as I can get to lending you the books.  If anything sounds interesting, check your library for a copy.  If a title sounds like something you just couldn’t live without reading, and it’s not available locally, request a copy through Inter-Library Loan. 

Last night I pulled down my four Gladys Hasty Carroll books:  As the Earth Turns, Sing Out the Glory, One White Star, and Only Fifty Years Ago.  I read the first two chapters of Earth and decided that I didn’t need to read those books again.  It’s probably the mood I’m in, but not much fiction is getting my attention right now.  Maybe I’ve moved past these books - who knows. 

In the meantime, I did read - and decided to keep - On the Blue Comet by Rosemary Wells.  

Yep, the same gal who does the Max and Ruby little-bitty-kid books.  “Say apple, Max.”  

This story is about model railroads and real ones - here's a link to the real Blue Comet train.

The On the Blue Comet is a kids’ story and I like it - except for one thing.  Some editor slipped up and allowed a modern word to be used in a paragraph towards the end of the story.  The book is set in 1931, 1941, and momentarily in 1926.  My reading-brain screeched to a halt when I ran across the anachronism.  Things like that an ruin a story!  I managed to get myself back in the right time and read on.  It’s on my shelf for a while longer.

I read a lot of young adult books.  I buy very few.  Seems like young-adult writers, nowadays, write in series - -  the-longer-the-series-the-better? - - and I have an objection to a format that comes in 47 parts.  I read the Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, Tom Swift, series books when I was a kid, but they had all been written long before I was reading them and I could go from one to the other without pause. 

Now, I generally wait until a series is “finished” before beginning.  One exception has been the Rick Riordan books.  One of these days, when he’s finished writing, I’ll start again at the beginning and go through them in one fell swoop.  

We older readers at our house (an ancient me, a 16-year-old grandson, and a 14-year-old grandson) also like The 39 Clues series - one that drives me crazy with all the parts-to-come. 

For some reason, the girls (12, 10, and 7) read different books.  They don’t seem to care for adventure - except for young-reader TheMagic Treehouse stories.  There are a lot of these books on the home-library shelves in the back room.  We’ve all read them; well, not all: the 7-year-old is still working her way through them.

Here are two that I would buy and keep, if I were rolling in dough:  the 5 Fablehaven books by Brandon Mull and the Inheritance series by Christopher Paolini.   

Grandson number 2 is re-reading the Mull books - we each read them about 6 months ago.  When one of the boys brings home from the library something interesting, there are two more of us waiting to read before the book goes back.  If it’s recently published, we have only two weeks for the three of us to read it before the book has to move on to the next person on the reserve list.  That makes for some pushy behavior:  Are you finished with it YET!?!?!

One more “kid” book that I have on my shelf, and will keep, is Ted Bell’s “In the Nick of Time”.  I have read the second book, but don’t have a copy.  I seem to remember that it was to be a series, too, but haven’t noticed a third book listed anywhere.  Maybe I ought to check again.  He writes a really good story.  I tried one of his adult adventure stories, but didn’t get very far into it for the language.  I figure if an author can write a Really Good kid’s book without foul language, then they ought to be able to write one for adults that way, too.  Will someone please tell them that?

I’m down to about 155 books now - probably the least number I’ve owned since I was a teen-ager.   Yikes!  I found another Gladys Hasty Carroll - The Light Here Kindled.   It will join the others in the library sale sack.

Abel Davis

I’m trying to do two things at once.  Only two you say?  Well, then, only two to write about.  Cousin Pam and I are working on our Davis line.  Make that ONE of the Davis lines in our family.  We have two of those, both in Virginia.  Did you know that Davis might as well be Smith or Jones?  I think we’re more determined this time to find the clues.  We do have some good leads and promising correspondence initiated with researchers.  Can you believe we’re back to letter-writing to discover our family?  

My other current Serious Project is to whittle my library to fewer than two-hundred books.  I will need to move one of these days soon, and it would be better if I didn’t have so much to cart around.

It shouldn’t be so hard to let go of books.  They’re stories put to paper that at some point in my life have meant a good deal to me.  The trick is to find out if they still do, which really requires reading them again - each one.  If they are still resonant, they stay. 

The other trick to a book earning keeping-status is whether or not I could ever find it again, if I decided in future years that I needed to hear that story one more time.  The libraries these days often disgorge from their shelves the most wonderful older books to make room for general faddish printings or just pure garbage.  I wish they would leave the pop philosophy, politics, health crazes, etc, for bookstores to fend off on people (I love you, book smiths!), and spend their money instead on books that will “stand the test of time”.

Here’s why I love old books.  

Bess Streeter Aldrich.  I’m starting, again, “Song of Years”, printed in 1939, and this is part of her opening chapter:

The author is describing a pathway . . . 

      "But if the corn is high you must come to the second gate before you can see the tall white tombstones,the close-clipped grass of the plots, and the graveled paths that lie between.

       Here rest those first settlers.

       It is a place of utter peace. . . . But though there is a deep peace about them now, almost can you hear their loud laughter that this is so.  They would tell you that peace may be here at the end of the trail, but there was very little at the end of that other one which led westward from Dubuque.

       Because they who lie here are all connected by blood or marriage or neighborhood ties, the life of one in its bare outlines is the life of all."  

I can read that section over and over; it makes such an impression in my mind.  It’s the core of genealogy.

I can hardly wait to re-read this one.  I guess it has earned a place in the bookcase.

I’m going to add here a bit of the record of Abel Davis of Maryland, of Monongalia Co, Virginia (he was long-gone before it became West Virginia), of Champaign Co, Ohio, and finally of White Co, Indiana.  If this trail sounds familiar, please let me hear from you (address in right panel, under the flowers).  There are a lot more guesses and probabilities in my file for Abel, but these are the things we are now pretty sure of.

~~~~~I've come back to take Abel away.  He is on a separate posting.~~~~~~

The Garden in January

I haven’t been in the garden for a long time - not since the end of August or first part of September.  I injured my arm and had trouble with it for months and months.  It turned out to be a pinched nerve rather than muscle strain and finally got itself un-pinched.  Thank goodness!  The moral of this story is that there hasn’t been any gardening done all that time.

Then - the weekend before Christmas we had an ice storm in Oklahoma.  It was a doozie!  I've posted pictures of the ice at our house; these are from Mom's place.

 The sage and the thyme survived nicely and looked beautiful in ice.

 The centerpiece of our flowerbeds - the redbud tree - split and toppled.   

A few smaller branches were hanging brokenly - 

mostly resting on bird feeders.

Rob, the handyman extraordinaire, came when the weather warmed up and cut everything down to a two-foot stump.  Younger Brother came to get that last bit for the lathe-turned ballpoint pens that his woodshop class makes. 

When the weather warms up again, Rob will get a stump grinder to remove the roots, then we’ll plant a flowering shrub in the middle to replace the tree.  It surely will be missed.  The Redbud was old, had lost a lot of its branches until it was more sculpture than full tree.  Just the way we liked it.

So, I guess I’ll be starting over with the garden this year.  

That’s ok.  I get to dig in the dirt.

~~~Why a shrub?  'Cause I'm in my sixties and Mom is in her eighties.  We can't wait around for a tree to grow.