Appendix III
During the course of the war, 225 men were killed, or died of wounds or illness while serving with the 24th Welsh, the majority of whom fell on the Western Front. Sixteen are buried or commemorated in Egypt; eighty-seven in Palestine; two in Belgium; 107 in France; one in Germany; one is commemorated in Greece; one commemorated in Iraq; three are buried in England; and seven are buried in Wales. Some of the officers were still classed as yeomanry officers, while some were attached from other units. There were also several casualties among the Pembroke and Glamorgan Yeomanry regiments in Egypt before the two merged to form the battalion, so they have been added to the roll; and some men from the 24th Welsh were also attached to other units.
With the formation of the second and third line battalions of each regiment, many of the men who served with these were despatched as reinforcements to other units. As a result, somewhere in the region of 160 further Pembroke Yeomanry and over eighty Glamorgan Yeomanry members were killed while serving with other units, in addition to the members of the 24th Welsh who fell, making an accurate casualty roll somewhat of a challenge.
The following roll of men of the 24th Welsh who fell is considered to be as accurate as possible, and is laid out in alphabetical order, with name, rank, number, unit and date of death:
Acknowledgements
It is almost impossible to be able to fully acknowledge all of the people and sources of information that have been used to write this book, as the author has been carrying out research on the 24th Welsh intermittently for over twelve years in between other work, but the following are the notable contributors who come to mind: Mark ‘Taff’ Collins, who is a mine of information for anything relating to the Welsh Regiment; Nick Powley, for copies of his uncle G. M. Rumball’s photographs, which include a particularly fine group photograph of all of the Pembroke Yeomanry officers just after the outbreak of war; John Dart, former curator of the Welsh Regiment Museum at Cardiff, for allowing me to copy the memoires of Ernest Idris Cumpstone; Pembrokeshire Archives for supplying scanned copies of several items in their fine collection, namely the memoirs of Lawrence Marks and Gerald Marston Owen and of J. B. Hitching’s ‘The Campaigns of the 1/1st Pembroke Yeomanry’; Gal Shaine for supplying modern photographs of the Beersheba battlefield, and the remnants of trenches and defensive positions there; Rhys Davies, for kindly sending me several photographs relating to John Jenkin Davies of Llanfarian. To anyone else who I have missed out who has sent me photographs in the past, I apologise, as my referencing technique leaves a lot to be desired!
The photographic collection of the Library of Congress (USA), several of which are used in this book, contains a large number of items relating to Turkish occupied Palestine, and these photographs are available copyright free via the Library’s website.
The fine newspaper archive collection held by the National Library of Wales at Aberystwyth, most of which is now freely available online, has been of great importance, proving to be an important source of portraits of some of the men and also being a great source of information from the myriad of letters from men of the 24th Welsh published in various newspaper during the course of the war.
The archives of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) are a standard source for any work of this type, and we sometimes forget what an important role the CWGC plays in commemorating these brave men. Also related to this is the Soldier’s Died in the Great War CD (SDGW), which contains details of all of the officers and men of the British army who fell.
The availabilty of the surviving service papers on Ancestry and Find My Past, together with other available medal rolls and census records, is of great value when researching individual men.
The author has also made use of his own personal collection of photographs, war diaries, trench maps and letters for this book.