This is my Great Uncle who was “killed in Action” near Mametz at such a tragically young age. He went out to the war with his two brothers, Thomas Ben Jones and my Grandfather, Edward “Ted” Jones but he was the only one of them never to return home. My Great Grandmother, Elizabeth, a widow at the time, and so an old family story goes, reacted by refusing to speak about him or allow anyone else to even mention his name. This infuriated my Grandmother, Edith Jane who, in order to try and put this right, named her first born son, Myrddin, after my Great Uncle lost on the Somme. So my Great Grandmother, was finally forced to confront her grief, acknowledge her loss and remember her son William Myrddin Jones, lost to her on the battlefield in the First World War.

My Great Uncle, William Myrddin Jones, is now especially remembered on the centenary of the end of the First World War by my late Uncle Myrddin’s two children, Sian and Richard as well as myself, Ian - “They grow not old as we that are left grow old.”

Ian Jones