242142 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.".
|