Captain David Jones, 10th Battalion (1st Rhondda) Welch Regiment.

(Featured in the ‘Remembering for Peace’ exhibition)

Captain David Jones was born in Llanddewi-Brefi, near Tregaron in 1893. After leaving Tregaron County School, he held teaching posts in schools in Llanddewi-Brefi and Pontrhydfendigaid, before going to Aberystwyth University. While he was at University he was a member of the Officer Training Corps, and joined the army in 1916. In a letter home to his mother, he explains why he felt compelled to join up:

“Remember that this country is expecting the Germans to land at any moment, and that then we’ll be like the Belgians, with our homes destroyed. I think you’d rather lose one son than lose the whole family”.

Captain Jones fought in the Mametz Wood offensive, and died on 12th July 1916, aged 25. He has no known grave, but his name is on the Thiepval Memorial to the missing of the Somme.

Why did so many people enlist? Captain David Jones was in the majority. Although recruitment was slow from some areas of Wales, over 270,000 Welshmen, 10% of the population, were to serve in the First World War, with one in nine of them losing their lives.

1. Put yourself in the shoes of Captain David Jones at the time. What might have persuaded you that you needed to go and fight? What influences would have been exerted in terms of information, as well as peer pressure, social norms and expectations?

2. In the above quotation David Jones is writing to his mother. Do you think there may have been any other motives for him to write in the way he did?

What about those who refused to fight? In another letter home to his mother, David Jones voices his opinion of those who tried to be exempted from fighting in no uncertain terms:

‘I heard from JD that he and some of his friends were trying to join the gas company. He said that would be preferable to taking part in a Bayonet Charge. I’m sure that everyone would prefer to be out of a Bayonet Charge but if everyone was like them where would we be as a country by now? I must say I don’t have much faith in cowards. You have to die sometime and what better way of dying than laying down your life to protect your country’s elderly, women and young people – there’s no pleasure in looking forward to fighting to keep ‘slackers’ alive and in comfort.’

3. What do you think of this point of view?

4. Can you understand why he felt like this?