Cpt. Arthur Wellesley "Bill" Parry 113 Field Regiment Royal Artillery (d.16th Dec 1943)
The story of my father's death during the advance to the Gustav Line is long and complicated. I have written an account based on information given to me over fifty years ago by a fellow officer who was with him at the end.
What Really Happened?
The accepted version of events leading up to father’s death was straight-forward and in a way comforting. For Mama they were established facts and not worthy of further examination or discussion. Her husband had gone to the aid of a group of wounded sappers, had stepped on a mine and was killed instantly.
I’m not altogether sure where these ‘facts’ came from, but obviously his Colonel had written to the family - maybe to my Grandfather Parry Williams in Wales - and told the tale that we all accepted as a true record of the death of Captain the Reverend Arthur Wellesley Parry Williams BA in Italy on 16th December, 1943.
Father had been with the 8th Army from the reverses in Egypt right through El Alamein to victory in Tunisia. Initially, before embarkation, his regiment was up in arms against being saddled with a God-Botherer who was expected to cramp their style, but as Father turned out to have been a reserve in Oxford’s pre-war XV as well as winning a Blue for hockey and tennis, and had a trial as a flank forward for Wales, he was grudgingly accepted.
There exists a yellowing cutting from the Sunday Express of an article written by a fellow officer after father’s death. This paean of praise to their padre tells in detail of his acceptance by his soldiers and the grief they all felt when, after nearly eighteen months continuously fighting, he should be killed in an act of loving impetuosity which defined the man.
This might be the primary text for the version I had accepted until one Founder’s Day at St. Edmunds in the ‘fifties, when I met Ken Anderson
I was friendly with Bruce Anderson, a contemporary in Walker House who must have mentioned my name to his father. Mr. Anderson sought me out.
“Are you Parry-Williams?” he asked. “Any relation to Bill Parry-Williams?”
“No, sir,” I said. “Not a ‘Bill’. Afraid not.”
“Oh,” he said. “Sorry.” And turned away.
Later in the day, he returned.
“Look,” he said. “You didn’t have a relative in the 8th Army? A padre?”
Then I remembered that ‘Bill’ was the name Father had been called in the article in the Sunday Express.
“Yes, sir. My father, sir.”
He regarded this callow thirteen year old for some time and then said.
“All right, Nigel, I’ll tell you about your father. I was with him all through North Africa and I was there when he was killed.”
I remember him squeezing my arm, a gesture of familiarity altogether alien to my generation. He looked me straight in the eye.
“You’re too young, now. We’ll meet up when you’re a bit older. Maybe after you leave school”
And that was that. I quizzed Bruce who had no further information. So in the manner of all teenagers I got on with the things I felt to be important. I never saw Mr. Anderson again until I was nineteen. I’d failed to get into Oxford and was too young to have been called up for National Service so a spell in uniform seemed a reasonable way to pretend to be ‘doing my bit’; even then I had to make do with a General List Commission in the Territorial Army, initially training cadets, and later with the KKRC which transmogrified into the Royal Green Jackets .
By a strange coincidence, Father and I were both in 56th Division and his first attachment was a Reconnaissance Battalion, a similar outfit to the one to which I was posted.
Kenneth Anderson was Night News Editor on the Daily Mirror and as I was still a chum of his son’s, I felt I ought to fulfil the arrangement Kenneth and I had made four years before. Not knowing what to expect and in some trepidation, I rang the Mirror and asked to speak to Kenneth Anderson. He was a somewhat abrupt man, his clipped responses probably exacerbated by the job and I have to admit I didn’t warm to him.
We arranged to have lunch at the Devonshire Club in St. James’s where, incidentally, I had met an uncle by marriage who advised me against ‘going for a soldier’ and suggested instead a job with him in Lentherique, which he owned.
Anyway, after my previous visit to a gentleman’s club I knew enough of the protocol to enter and ask the porter for Mr. Anderson, rather than hang around in the street, expecting him to be late.
I was duly ushered into an ante-room and Kenneth rose to greet me. We did the small talk thing and went in to lunch. I don’t remember anything of the meal except that it was nursery food and there was a great deal of wine, but even after almost fifty years I can remember the conversation. Actually it was more of a monologue from Kenneth.
I had suspected he was the author of the piece in the Sunday Express but it turned out I was wrong. The writer was another officer in the battery and he was killed less than a year later. To my shame I’ve forgotten his name.
Kenneth verified that the sentiments in the article about the 113th Field Regiment’s initial suspicion of the new padre were correctly reported, as was the swift way that Father - with no sign of trying to ingratiate himself - became important to each and every soldier.
He was known as ‘Bill’ and ‘Uncle’ by officers and men, never ‘Sir’ nor even ‘Padre’, except by the Adjutant who was a bit of a stickler. Being aged 37 he was considered positively ancient and he was expected not to able to keep up with the fit young soldiers he looked after. But to everybody’s amazement, he shone in all sports and appeared as tireless on route marches as in his pastoral duties.
That he had a pretty wife at home was the source of much innuendo and it was a sure-fire way of making him go scarlet and writhe with embarrassment. The fact he had a son was triumphantly used as further proof of a lack of ascetic celibacy.
Although this was rather more information than I needed, it helped to develop a picture of a man whom I’d not known next to nothing about. And everything I’d heard from the family had been far more anodyne and respectful.
Kenneth’s account was an example of the tough-love unique amongst soldiers on active service who found it hard to commit themselves to new arrivals; men who might be taken from them tomorrow.
Nonetheless many went on to forge the deepest, most enduring and loving friendships there can be between men. This was something I would spend the rest of my life regretting I never got to share.
There’s absolutely no doubt that ‘Bill’ was loved by his flock. He was the butt of jokes, yet he was deeply respected. He could be goaded into giggling embarrass- ment, but could also be relied upon to come up trumps in every emergency.
Kenneth told me Church Parades had been poorly attended until ‘Bill’ came along but developed into regular congregations which included devout atheists, all the left-footers in the Regiment and a couple of Jews. It should come a no surprise that the longer and further the unit advanced across the desert, the better attended my Father’s services became.
He told of the occasion when ‘Bill’ was conducting Holy Communion from the back of the three-quarter ton Dodge which Father apparently referred to as ‘St. Jude on Wheels’ - St. Jude being the patron saint of lost causes - when the Luftwaffe gate-crashed proceedings in the form of a strafing Me 110.
The Liturgy was temporarily forgotten and everybody, Father included, buried themselves in the sand. As the fighter roared back to base accompanied by very un-Christian sentiments, the Dodge suddenly ignited. Father’s batman/driver leapt on board and chucked out Father’s wooden cross, chalice, paten and bible - w3hich I still possess - but was too late to save himself as the truck burst into flames.
Before anyone else had time to move, the Padre jumped on board, picked up his driver - Kenneth said he weighed considerably more than Father - and jumped to the ground with him in his arms.
He remembered how tenderly Father held the man so no sand got into the terrible burns which covered every inch of the mortally wounded driver’s head, legs and arms, but he died within minutes. This was the first of scores of dead bodies Father prayed over and buried as the 8th Army chased Rommel back the way he had come to Tripoli.
Italy was worse. Father’s letters home, although still witty and warm, began to reflect the terrible attrition of fighting up from the toe of Italy to the heavily defended Gustav Line which had Monte Cassino as its hub.
Early on there appeared to be a brittleness in the relations between the British forces and the newly-arrived and pugnacious Americans who considered their allies to be ‘fought out’. Kenneth remembered well the antipathy between Montgomery and Patton in Sicily and that these attitudes percolated down through the chain of command to officers, NCOs and private soldiers.
However, General Mark Clark was roundly detested by everybody, American and British. Paradoxically, this helped to unite Yanks and Limeys in common cause.
During this time of grinding toil day after day in vile conditions with torrential rain and deep mud over difficult terrain, ‘Bill’ was ever his cheerful, ebullient self, always and unlawfully up at the front of the column; caring for the injured and the dying; praying over the already dead and swapping insults with the dog-tired but still lippy gunners.
One duty of every officer was to write letters of condolence to the families of those killed and Father’s input was gratefully accepted, although he often wrote separately if he had anything extra which he felt could ease the relatives’ pain. He also helped the gunners with their own letters home if they were tongue-tied or plain illiterate. Some bold souls baited the padre by expecting him to write down verbatim the utter filth they solemnly dictated for girlfriends and wives.
Any soldier in an aid station or forward hospital could expect a visit from ‘Bill’ in his torn battledress and grimy dog collar. Strangely, it was the soldiers themselves who were most likely to bring up matters spiritual.
Kenneth himself was wounded and awoke to find ‘Bill’ praying beside his cot, which made him think these were his Last Rites and complained croakily that dying was the last thing he intended to do. The Padre giggled, insisting he was just investing in a spot of insurance on Kenneth’s behalf.
When Kenneth returned to the front, the Division was battling its way past Monte Camino twenty miles north of Naples towards the Mignano Gap, less than ten miles from Monte Cassino itself.
He was shocked to find many unfamiliar faces while searching in vain for many he’d known in North Africa. However ‘Bill’ was there “bouncing like Tigger” although there was a sadness Kenneth hadn’t seen before in his old friend, a quiet stoicism which was never far below the surface.
It wasn’t long after he got back that the whole line moved up at speed in one of the few rapid advances during the campaign. In the pouring rain, they were temporarily halted on a single-track road through some olive orchards when they came across a group of sappers about one hundred yards off to the side, kneeling around a wounded comrade.
Contrary to the report in the Sunday Express, the Engineers were alone and thus far no medical help had arrived.
The sappers shouted that they had been clearing a mine-field and that one had gone off. It so happened that ‘Bill’s’ jeep was a few yards down the column and he came up to find out what was going on. Before being put totally in the picture he decided he was going in to help, but was told in no uncertain terms that this was the job for other sappers who would clear a path to the injured man for the medics. It was no place for some clumsy God-Botherer.
This was too much for Father who pulled himself up to his full five feet eight and three-quarter inches and demanded to be granted passage. Fatally, someone told him to act his age. It was reported to Kenneth later that ‘Bill’ said something rather un-Godly and marched forward.
He was immediately restrained which made matters even worse. The wing forward in him saw a gap and he went for it. Breaking clear he charged down the blind side, breaking tackles to left and right.
Father hadn’t got more than a few yards before he stepped on the mine. There was a flash, and the appalling dull crump of the explosion. Then, from out of the smoke and the shocked silence came the sound of my Father laughing. He must have realised the stupidity of his actions.
Soldiers from either ends of the column came rushing up when they heard ‘Bill’ was down, Kenneth amongst them. Some wouldn’t wait for the sappers to arrive and clear a path, but followed into the minefield, following their padre’s footsteps.
(If only I‘d written it down at the time, but it wasn‘t appropriate and the chance never repeated itself so I don’t know the precise words he spoke to Kenneth - and which Kenneth relayed to me over that luncheon table but they were along the lines of “Sorry old chap. Made a bit of a mess of that, didn’t I?”)
They carried their grievously injured padre out of the mine-field and he was rushed to an aid station and thence to a field hospital near Naples. It was obvious to his surgeons that Father would not recover.
I found out since that the anti-personnel mine he probably stepped on was particularly vicious. The initial explosion threw a box which contained the main charge to around waist height were it exploded. These mines are held in particular contempt because they were designed to maim and not to kill outright.
The typically efficient German logic meant that for each grievously injured victim, stretcher bearers, medical orderlies, surgeons and nursing staff would all be involved, thus tying up far more soldiers than would be required to bury a corpse.
Many members of the Regiment put in for permission to visit their dying Padre, but as they were involved in an advance, this was tactically impossible.
When the advance stalled some days later, everybody who could be spared made the journey southward. Kenneth got there in time. Most were too late and Father died on December 16th 1943. Ironically, the wounded sapper in the orchard was able to rejoin his unit after treatment at the aid station to which Father was originally sent.
A group of the officers are said to have approached the Colonel with a view to putting their padre up for a decoration. Correctly, it was pointed out that ‘Bill’s’ act of courage would not satisfy the qualifying requirements. His actions were unnecessary, though unarguably gallant. The enemy was not involved, except insofar as they had laid the mine-field and anyway, he had saved no one - not even himself. And he’d disobeyed the orders of a senior officer, to whit the Major who had been hanging onto his leg.
It was agreed that it was far better to remember ‘Bill’s’ actions in the context of the man they knew and loved rather than to send off a well-meaning but un-thought through recommendation which would inevitably be turned down.
So that was that.
Kenneth’s war finished in 1946 when he went back to newspapers and tried to forget about the friends he’d made and lost. It was only his son’s chance mention of a boy in Baker House with the same surname as ‘Bill’ - albeit suddenly with a hyphen which the Padre for some egalitarian reason of his own, sometimes chose to eschew - that had spurred him into retelling the story.
As I recall, Kenneth Anderson and I talked on into the evening. I eventually walked out into St James’s, glowing with pride and full of a respect I will never lose for soldiers, whatever uniform they wore.
Mama never wanted to meet any of her husband’s army colleagues and it was out of respect for her wishes that on her behalf I turned down a request from an old soldier who served with Father and had spotted her name in the membership list of the Friends of Lichfield Cathedral.
I’ve often wondered whether she suspected the official version of events would not be corroborated by those who were actually there. She had decided, with typically steely resolve that her husband had died cleanly, and swiftly.
The fact I’m putting down Kenneth Anderson’s version - or rather my memories of his memories - is only that there will now be a record of what probably happened. In no way does in invalidate what Mama chose to believe.
The Reverend Arthur Wellesley Parry Williams BA, 113th Field Regiment Royal Artillery, is buried in the British Military Cemetery, Minturno, just south of Monte Cassino. There is an epitaph on the stone: “Say not good night, but in some brighter clime wish me good morning.”
In the mail earlier on Christmas Eve 1943, the very day that the telegram arrived from the War Office, there was a letter, dated 10th November, from Arthur to Audrey, his youngest sister-in-law. She decided to open it later and show it to Mama on Christmas Day. Her intentions were, tragically, overtaken by events and on the grounds that it would be both tactless and inappropriate, Audrey never showed Mama the letter. Much later, when she thought the time was right, she decided to show it to her sister only to discover to her horror that she’d misplaced it. Mama died before the letter was eventually found
It was only after Audrey’s death, sixty-four years after it was sent, that I discovered it, wedged behind a drawer in her drop-front desk.
It was the last letter he wrote before being mortally wounded and is the bleakest of all I’ve read. One section joshed Audrey that he’d been showing photographs of his wife’s younger sisters around the Mess, and that he could expect to be “…visited by many of them after the war with a particular purpose in view!!!” But he then the mood changes, “Some of them unfortunately have since died - a very terrible business, but war is like that and demands such sacrifice. The one thing is that we can never get used to it when it does happen. But I mustn’t keep on in this manner.” He had never before mentioned death, as I recall.
However, the closing passage is a sublime reaffirmation of his love for my mother. “Tell Joan very quietly I simply adore her. Goodbye. Good night. Arthur.”
I wish now that she’d read it.
