|
|
This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this site you agree to accept cookies.
If you enjoy this site please consider making a donation.
Site Home
Help & FAQs
Features
Submissions
Information
Advertisements
World War 1 One ww1 wwII greatwar great 1914 1918 first battalion regiment
Pte. George Hiram Westgarth
British Army 10th Btn. Durham Light Infantry
from:Tredegar, Wales
(d.16th Dec 1917)
In 1965, aged 15, I sat with my grandmother Gladys Chapman nee Westgarth and her older brother Albert Westgarth - who had served in Gallipoli and Passchendaele - as they told me about the Great War.
Gladys told me, about her frightening experience just before Christmas 1917. She was walking along the footbridge crossing the main Cardiff to London railway line, at Adamsdown, when her brother George Westgarth came walking toward her. She said "Hello George, I thought you were still in France. Are you on leave?". With that she told me: "He just stared at me, smiled and walked straight through me...later we learnt that he had been killed at Passchendaele on the night of 15th/16th December 1917, with his brother Albert alongside him. Gladys then recalled her father, Henry Philipson Westgarth, waiting for his "three boys" to return from the war, but dying from flu before only two returning.
George, a collier in South Wales, had originally signed up with the Welsh Regiment, returned to mining in South Wales, and then joined the Durham Light Infantry in June 1917 and was killed 6 months later at Spree Farm, Ypres.
Albert Westgarth then recounted some of his memories of that night. He told me that they had saved some of their rations of beer. He had crawled from his position to meet his brother George. He told me that night a barrage came across and they were hit, lying alongside each other. When Albert came to and woke up the following morning he said "George was gone, dead". Albert took his brother's blood soaked papers - his only memento. When I asked Albert more about his experiences he gave a long hard look and said: "I have seen, experienced and smelt things I hope that you never have to". When I asked him "what smell?", he gave me a far away and haunting look and said: "Rotting flesh. Men and horses. Rotting stinking flesh.".
Related Content:
Can you help us to add to our records?
The names and stories on this website have been submitted by their relatives and friends. If your relations are not listed please add their names so that others can read about them
Did your relative live through the Great War? Do you have any photos, newspaper clippings, postcards or letters from that period? Have you researched the names on your local or war memorial?
If so please let us know.
Do you know the location of a Great War "Roll of Honour?"We are very keen to track down these often forgotten documents and obtain photographs and transcriptions of the names recorded so that they will be available for all to remember.
Help us to build a database of information on those who served both at home and abroad so that future generations may learn of their sacrifice.
Celebrate your own Family History
Celebrate by honouring members of your family who served in the Great War both in the forces and at home. We love to hear about the soldiers, but also remember the many who served in support roles, nurses, doctors, land army, muntions workers etc.
Please use our Family History resources to find out more about your relatives. Then please send in a short article, with a photo if possible, so that they can be remembered on these pages.
The free section of The Wartime Memories Project is run by volunteers.
This website is paid for out of our own pockets, library subscriptions and from donations made by visitors. The popularity of the site means that it is far exceeding available resources and we currently have a huge backlog of submissions.
If you are enjoying the site, please consider making a donation, however small to help with the costs of keeping the site running.
Hosted by:
The Wartime Memories Project Website
is archived for preservation by the British Library
Copyright MCMXCIX - MMXXIV
- All Rights Reserved -We do not permit the use of any content from this website for the training of LLMs or for use in Generative AI, it also may not be scraped for the purpose of creating other websites.
