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Pte. Wifred John Godfrey Mercy Powell
British Army 2nd Btn. Monmouthshire Regiment
from:Pontnewydd Cwmbran
Wilfred Powell was born in Redbrook near Gloucester in 1890, but around 1895 he moved with his parents Henry and Rose and his sister Annie, to Pontnewydd, Cwmbran where his father worked in the tinplate works. Wilfred married Alice Flippance in 1910 and worked as a haulier underground at Cwmbran Colliery.
Although only 5 feet 3 inches tall Wilfred had joined the 2nd Battalion of the Monmouthshire Regiment, a territorial unit prior to getting married. Pension records say he enlisted on 5th March 1907 but silver war badge records say 16th of March 1909, he was still a part-time soldier when war was declared in August 1914.
The 2nd Battalion was immediately mobilised at Pontypool and then in quick succession moved through Pembroke Dock, Oswestry and Northampton before landing at Le Havre in France on the 7th of November 1914 as part of the 12th Brigade in the 4th Division of the British Expeditionary Force.
Like many others, Wilfred Powell's service records were destroyed by bombing during WW2. Family history tells us he fought with the Monmouthshires at the Second Battle of Ypres in western Belgium in April and May 1915 and that he also spent some time as a tunneller, before joining the Royal Army Medical Corps. The records that do survive suggest that he never formally joined the Royal Engineers as a tunneller but he may well have been attached to the tunnellers as were many men from the Monmouthshires. It's also possible that he was one of the men drawn from the 2nd Battalion who, under Captain Arthur Edwards of Blaenafon, formed the 4th Divisions' Mining Party and exploded the first British mine of the war.
What we do know is that the 2nd Battalion fought in the battles of the Marne, Aisne and Messines in 1914 and in the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915. The 2nd suffered so many casualties in the latter battle that it had to be amalgamated with its sister battalions for several months before its ranks could be refilled.
The photograph shows him wearing his Monmouthshire cap badge, a wound stripe and two service chevrons suggesting it was taken in the late summer or autumn of 1916.
From November 1916 to January 1917 he spent time in Whitchurch hospital recovering from a bought of trench fever.
By the end of 1916 he had transferred to the Royal Army Medical Corps and the 1st Welsh Field Ambulance where he became a stretcher bearer. Silver war badge records show him as being in 1st Welsh Field Ambulance but this unit served with the 53rd Welsh Division in the Middle East? There is no indication anywhere else that he served anywhere other than the Western Front. Family history says that on hearing the gas whistle Wilfred stopped to help an injured soldier with his gas mask before putting on his own and was exposed to gas as a result. He was invalided out the army just two months before the end of the war but due to his injuries he was unable to return to his job at Cwmbran Colliery. Wilfred gave his daughter Francis, born in 1914, the middle name Louvain in memory of the Belgium town that was destroyed by the Germans in the first month of the war. For his service in WW1 Wilfred received the 1914 Star, British and Victory medals, an honourable discharge and a Silver War Badge. He died in 1941 aged 51.
