Sydney Pugh, Lance Corporal, 10th Battalion Welsh Regiment
Sydney Pugh was born in 1890 in Stansbatch, Staunton-on Arrow. He lived in a four room house (including kitchen) with his parents, one brother and two sisters. His siblings were all older than him. His father had been born in Radnorshire and his mother at Dolley Green near Presteigne. The 1891 census states that his father was a waggoner. A waggoner was entirely responsible for care of horses under his control and attended to the watering, feeding and bedding of the horses as well as harnessing them and driving them in accordance with whatever work was to be undertaken - ploughing, reaping, harrowing and carting.
By 1901, his mother, Jane, is a widow. She is working as a laundress alongside one of her daughters who is her assistant. Her address is The Laundry, Stansbatch, Staunton-on Arrow. Sydney Pugh is registered as a scholar.
By 1911, while his mother and a sister are residing in the same dwelling and working in the same occupation as in 1901, Sydney Pugh is now residing as a boarder at The Central Hotel Cardiff.
Above photo: Central Hotel, Cardiff, circa 1972, demolished in 2005 (1)
In this census, his occupation is that of a collier. Alongside him in the same census are other boarders, some of whom are mariners working for steamship companies and others who are railway workers. Also, on the same page as the one that Sydney Pugh is registered on, are several of the hotel staff from hotel sandwich maid, hotel under chef, cafe counter hand to head waiter and restaurant waiter.
On 1st June 1913, Elizabeth Miskell gives birth to a daughter, Mary Elizabeth Miskell. Elizabeth Miskell was brought up at Geligaer in the Rhymney Valley. Her father, in the census of 1901, was a steel worker and in 1901, as a widower, is working as “hewer of coal”. A son of his who is also a hewer of coal resides at the property alongside his daughter, Mary Elizabeth Miskell, who is a housekeeper for her father and brother.
Sometime before 1st June 1913, Sydney Pugh had started a relationship with Elizabeth Miskell. It is possible that by 1913 he was working in the same colliery as Elizabeth Miskell’s father and brother and thereby met her through them. On 1st June, 1913, Sydney Pugh becomes the father of Elizabeth Mary Miskell who was born out of wedlock.
Three months later, Sydney Pugh and Elizabeth Miskell were married in Breconshire.
In 1914, Sydney Pugh enlists in the 10th (1st Rhondda) Welch Regiment
Therefore, he would have enlisted very early in the war probably between September to November 1914 when Lord Kitchener was in the throes of the “Your Country Needs You” campaign to recruit 500,000 volunteers for his New Army which was to be made up out of eager and enthusiastic civilians who had assumed that they were all off on a jaunt to France and that they would be back before Christmas. What could be better than chumming up with one’s pals and giving the Huns a good hiding especially after what the Hun was alleged to have done to Belgium women and children?
Above photo: Recruiting poster (IWM)
“The 10th (1st Rhondda) Regiment was raised in the Rhondda Valley in September 1914 by D. Watts Morgan MP and coal miner’s agent. On 29th April, 1915, the regiment became part of 114 Brigade, 38th (Welsh) Division. They moved to Winchester in August 1915 for final training and proceeded to France, landing at Le Havre in December 1915.” (2)
“The 38th (Welsh) Division arrived in France with a poor reputation, seen as a political formation that was ill-trained and poorly led.
“On 1st July 1916, supported by a French attack to the south, thirteen divisions of Commonwealth forces launched an offensive on a line from north of Gommecourt to Maricourt. Despite a preliminary bombardment lasting seven days, the German defences were barely touched and the attack met unexpectedly fierce resistance.
Above photo: A German front line trench before Gommecourt, July 1916 (Wikipedia)
Losses were catastrophic and with only minimal advances on the southern flank, the initial attack was a failure. In the following weeks, huge resources of manpower and equipment were deployed in an attempt to exploit the modest successes of the first day. However, the German Army resisted tenaciously and repeated attacks and counter attacks meant a major battle for every village, copse and farmhouse gained.
The division's (the 38th Division) baptism by fire came in the first days of the Battle of the Somme, where it captured Mametz Wood at the loss of nearly 4,000 men. This strongly held German position needed to be secured in order to facilitate the next phase of the Somme offensive, the Battle of Bazentin Ridge. Despite securing its objective, the division's reputation was adversely affected by miscommunication among senior officers.” (Wikipedia)
Mametz Wood 10th –12 July 1916
“Sir Douglas Haig considered Mametz Wood an important objective, it could be used as a jumping off point for a further attack on the German Front to the North and British Artillery placed in the Wood would also then be in range to target German defences. Many Germans had assembled in Mametz Wood since 5th July 1916, and the British attempt on the 7th July to enter the wood failed. The Germans recognized the importance of controlling the wood as an obstacle in stopping any future British attacks so it was defended by elements of the Lehr Infantry Regiment (3rd Guards Division) who had previously fought on the Russian Front and were well trained and battle hardened.
Above photo: Mametz Wood today (Wikipedia)
The approach to the Wood was very exposed. British troops had to descend a slope then a steep chalk bank then climb up to a ridge (the ground rose for over a mile towards the ridge) where the fortified trenches of the German line lay and at all times they were exposed and within range of the enemy.
On 7th July at 8:30a.m. the 16th Welsh and the 11th South Wales Borderers moved down the slope into heavy German machine gun fire and artillery bombardment.
Above photo: An abandoned but purposely hidden German field gun in Mametz Wood (photo by Ernest Brooks) (National Library of Scotland)
They were compelled to take cover due to the ferocity of the German fire. Some were able to retreat but others were stranded in No Mans Land where they were picked off by the German snipers. A second attack reinforced by the 10th South Wales Borderers also failed and a planned third attempt was called off as it was decided it would be futile to continue. Further attempts were made on the 8th July (by the 17th Division), which also failed, and a planned night-time attack was cancelled.
On the 9th July Sir Douglas Haig and Sir Henry Rawlinson let their disappointment be known at the performance of the British troops in not entering the wood. The Commanding Officers of the 17th & 38th Divisions (the 10th Welch Regiment being in this division), who refused to send their men to certain slaughter, were relieved of their commands (the Commander of the Welsh Division was sent home) and Major General Watts was given control over the Welsh Division to use as he saw fit. They were to take the Wood at any cost.
Above photo: Taken by an officer in the Royal Welch Fusiliers before the attack on Mametz Wood -note how the landscape is still intact, and how the landscape is not churned up at this stage – no craters and devastated trees which the landscape was to be transformed into (3)
On the 10th of July the attack was a head on charge, the intention being to overrun the Germans with sheer weight of numbers. Officers & Sergeants had been advised the previous evening that there would be very heavy losses. The Welsh troops spent the evening singing Welsh hymns and by 3:00 a.m. (on the 10th) they were all in position for the attack.
Above photo: German observation post at Mametz Wood (NAM)
At 4:05 the troops advanced. Machine gunfire and rifle fire rained down on the troops, the Germans able to easily pick them off from their positions. There were heavy Welsh casualties especially amongst the Officers at this stage.
On entering the Wood, as well as the German gunfire, the Welsh troops also had to contend with casualties caused by the exploding trees (when the trees were hit by the shells, they exploded showering the troops with hundreds of shards of wood). The troops that entered the Wood had 5 days of hard close up fighting.
Above painting: The Welsh at Memetz Wood by Christopher Williams (National Museum of Wales
They were inadequately and poorly equipped with only 5 cartridges and 2 bombs each so the majority of the fighting was by bayonet, and this was done in dense overgrowth and under German machine gun fire. There were severe casualties. In total 3,993 Welsh soldiers serving in the 38th Welsh Division were killed or injured in the 5 days of the Battle of Mametz Wood.” (4)
Above illustration: “Mametz Wood - after the autumn advance, 1916 -'the abomination of desolation'. A view across the devastated Mametz Wood, with splintered tree stumps and flooded shell holes. The body of a dead German infantryman lies in the foreground, the legs visible but the torso and head hidden by the water of a flooded shell hole.” (artist J.B. Morell) (Wikipedia)
Sydney Pugh was reported wounded and missing on the last day of The Battle of Mametz Wood (12th July, 1916). He was 26 years old.
“The military historian William Philpott has called Mametz Wood a "gruesome baptism of fire" for the Welsh Division, crediting it for taking "a formidable position in one of the most intense close-quarter fights of the war". (5)
“David Jones, a private soldier serving with 15th (London Welsh) Royal Welsh Fusiliers, wounded in the fighting in the wood, placed his experiences at the heart of his epic poem ‘In Parenthesis’ (1937)” (6)
"the enemy front-fighters who shared our pains against whom we found ourselves by misadventure."
And
“When the shivered rowan fell
you couldn't hear the fall of it.
Barrage with counter-barrage shockt
deprive all several sounds of their identity,
what dark convulsed cacophony
conditions each disparity
and the trembling woods are vortex for the storm;
through which their bodies grope the mazy charnel-ways -
seek to distinguish waling men from walking trees and branchy
moving like a Birnam corpse.”
Robert Graves who fought at The Battle of Mametz wrote the following -
“It was full of dead Prussian Guards, big men, and dead Royal Welch Fusiliers and South Wales Borderers, little men. Not a single tree in the wood remained unbroken. “
“It was here that Siegfried Sassoon won his Military Cross, bringing in a wounded NCO from the German lines under fire.
However there was more, as Robert Graves recalled in Goodbye to All That:
“Siegfried had then distinguished himself by taking [on 3 July] single-handedly a battalion frontage that the Royal Irish Regiment had failed to take. He had gone over with bombs in daylight, under covering fire from a couple of rifles, and scared the occupants out. It was a pointless feat; instead of reporting or signalling for reinforcements he sat down in the German trench and began dozing over a book of poems which he had brought with him.” (7)
The Welsh writer, Emlyn Hughes, who was in the Royal Welch Fusiliers later wrote in “Taffy Went To War” -
"Gory scenes met our gaze. Mangled corpses in khaki and in field-grey; dismembered bodies, severed heads and limbs; lumps of torn flesh half way up the tree trunks... Shells of all calibres burst in plenteous continuance; furies of flying machine gun bullets swept from three directions."
Above photo: Troops in part of the square-mile of Mametz Wood where, at the end of five days, not a single tree was left standing (AWM)
Sydney Pugh is commemorated at The Thiepval Memorial on The Somme.
Above photo: Thiepval Memorial, Somme (CWGC)
“The Thiepval Memorial, the Memorial to the Missing of the Somme, bears the names of more than 72,000 officers and men of the United Kingdom and South African forces who died in the Somme sector before 20 March 1918 and have no known grave. Over 90% of those commemorated died between July and November 1916. The memorial also serves as an Anglo-French Battle Memorial in recognition of the joint nature of the 1916 offensive and a small cemetery containing equal numbers of Commonwealth and French graves lies at the foot of the memorial.
The memorial, designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, was built between 1928 and 1932 and unveiled by the Prince of Wales, in the presence of the President of France, on 1 August 1932.” (CWGC)
In the” UK, WWI Pensions and Ledgers Index” there is a card which states that Elizabeth Pugh was residing in 1917 at 13 Chapel Street, Pontlottyn, Glamorgan. On this card, Sydney Pugh’s daughter’s name is recorded as Mary Elizabeth Miskell who was “born out of wedlock”. A pension of 18s 6d was granted and was to be paid from 29th January 1917. Sometime in 1920, Elizabeth Pugh applied for an “alternative pension” of £2 1s 8d. On 30th August 1920, under article 3 of The Royal Warrant this was declined.
Alternative pensions were in certain cases granted to widows of men who had lost their lives during the war, these pensions being computed on the pre-war average earnings over the last 12 months of the deceased man’s wages prior to war breaking out on August 4th 1914. As a colliery worker, Sydney Pugh’s wages might well have been such that, based upon the alternative pension method of calculation, his widow was hoping to receive a more generous pension than the one she was receiving. What this does indicate is that Sydney Pugh enlisted very early after war was declared such that his widow, possibly confused, thought that, on that basis, the amount she should receive as a pension, should take in accord the average earnings that her husband had been receiving for the previous 12 months prior to 4th August 1914.
At that time men were paid much higher wages than women (26 shillings per week on average, compared to 11 shillings for working women), and the loss of a husband often also meant losing the main breadwinner in a family.
But against that, there was fear that if the pension was too generous, then it would mean that women would be discouraged from supporting themselves.
‘Eighteen shillings a week and no husband were heaven to women who, once industrious and poor were now wealthy and idle’ one man wrote to the Daily Express, complaining of the pension.” (8)
Rory MacColl
Sources
1/ https://www.walesonline.co.uk/lifestyle/nostalgia/gallery/photos-life-cardiff-50-years-23586450
2/ https://www.wartimememoriesproject.com/greatwar/allied/battalion.php?pid=1036
3/ https://greatwarphotos.com/2012/06/29/somme-a-view-of-mametz-wood-july-1916/
4/ https://livesofthefirstworldwar.iwm.org.uk/story/31148
5/ https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-36686484
6/ https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-36686484
7/ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-36725084
8/ https://www.mylearning.org/stories/how-the-first-world-war-affected-families/797