Lallie and Victor - a mother's locket

I have written previously about my great uncle, Robert Victor Davies but not about his older sister,  Mary Eleanor who was known to the family as Lallie.

During the summer I was going through a box of miscellaneous family photographs with my brother when we came across a locket. On one side it had a dark haired girl and on the other a young man in uniform.

My brother didn't know who they were but I recognised the girl as the oldest child born to Mary Grace Davies (nee Pritchard) and Robert Samuel Davies. Further investigations into the box revealed a full sized photograph of the soldier. This was the photograph I'd been looking for ever since visting Ypres and the Menin Gate and finding Victor's details amongst the missing. Just so as there could be no doubt about his identity on the back of the photograph in my Dad's neat handwriting was the inscription
"Robert Victor Davies - killed in France [sic] during the 1914-18 war at age 20 years. Served in Ireland for a time where this photo was taken."

Robert Victor Davies

Victor was killed on the Pilchem Ridge, near Ypres in Belgium on 31st July 1917 with many others from the 15th Battalion of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers.

I went back to look at the locket with Lallie on one side and Victor on the other and remembered a conversation with an older relative when I was a child. Lallie had died young she had said. A quick check of records on the internet showed that she had died at the age of 20 in March 1916. That was when I realised with the sense of having been given something that the locket I was holding must have belonged to their mother, Mary Grace and that she had the locket made so that she could carry her two lost children close to her heart.

The Menin Gate Memorial and Robert Victor Davies

The Menin Gate Memorial is where my great uncle Victor’s name is inscribed as one of the 54,389 men who are commemorated here. When I use the words ‘great uncle’ about someone who died nearly a hundred years ago your mind will probably conjure up an image of an elderly gentleman with Edwardian sideburns. Victor had just turned twenty when he was killed in July 1917, his birthday was in June so he was just out of his teens and only a few years older than my older child.

The Menin Gate is in the town of Ieper, known to the French speakers as Ypres and I expect that Victor will have called it Wipers like the rest of the troops.

During the day it is a thoroughfare with cars and buses and pedestrians passing through, going about their daily lives. In the evening it is closed to motor traffic for an hour for the sounding of the Last Post. This began in July 1928 as a gesture of gratitude from the Belgian people and the buglers came from the local fire brigade. These days it attracts crowds and people arrive in coachloads which is as it should be given how many men are remembered on all the walls. 

It had not occurred to me until I found R.V. Davies amongst all the names (eleven of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers with the surname Davies) that I was probably the first member of the family to visit. His mother was already a widow when he was killed and would not have had the money to go all the way to Belgium to look for her only son. I don’t think his younger sisters would have thought to go there.

Siegfried Sassoon hated it describing it in his poem  On Passing the New Menin Gate as ‘a pile of peace-complacent stone’. I wonder what he would have made of the fact that people continue to visit today looking for the dead. I have described my visit earlier on this blog and here is the poem for Victor.

For Victor at the Menin Gate

Where did you fall?

Somewhere out in the fields

the summer rain had turned to mud.

Where did you fall?

I cannot find the field corner

enriched with your Welsh blood.

Where did you fall?

There is only your name

among the thousands on a stone wall.

Where ever you fell,

I bring you a white rose, for peace,

Robert Victor Davies.

Victor's Family

Robert Victor Davies – 10th June 1897 – 31st July 1917

Victor was born at 10 Clonmel Street, Llandudno on 10^th June 1897, the second child in the family. His sister, Mary Eleanor was two years older. His father, Robert Samuel worked as a printer and his mother Mary Grace (nee Pritchard) was from Amlwch.

At the time of the 1901 census the family with three year old Victor was still living at 10 Clonmel Street, next door to the Alexandra Hotel. I assume they were living on the premises of his father’s print workshop.

Was he a happy child I wonder? He was the only boy and grew up in a household of sisters, Grace Elizabeth b 1901, Nora (my grandmother) b 1903, Edith Hannah (my aunt Edie) b 1906 and Robina (my aunt Bena) b 1908.

In 1908 the family were struck by disaster as Victor’s father, Robert died on 11^th February of influenza and pneumonia. He was only 39 years old and his death was registered by his brother and Victor’s uncle John Henry Davies who had been present at the death. Victor was ten when his father died and his youngest sister, Robina (Bena) was born on 23^rd March. How on earth did his mother cope with no husband and six children to care for? John Henry who lived nearby at 5 Hills Yard, Madoc Street, Llandudno will have helped I expect.

By the time of the 1911 census the family was living at 20 Alexandra Road Llandudno. His mother, Mary Grace was working as a dressmaker. Victor aged 13 was at school as were three of his sisters Grace Elizabeth, Nora, and Edie with the three year old Bena still at home. The family had taken in lodgers, a married couple John Richard Williams and Lydia Williams and Emily Gadd with her two children George Henry aged 6 and Annie May aged 1. His uncle John Henry, a 44 year old widower was still living at 5 Hills Yard with Mary Davies, Victor's grandmother. 

Victor's medal card (WO372/5) has him serving with the Welsh regiment (Soldier Number: 1466, Rank: Private,) and then the Royal Welsh Fusiliers (Soldier Number 56806 and rank Private. He was with the 15th Battalion of the Royal Welsh when he was killed on 31st July 1917 in the attack on Pilkem ridge. He had just turned twenty years of age.

His mother had gone home to Amlwch and he was remembered by the family with a notice in the local paper every August

2 August 1918 IN MEMORIAM Davies – In loving memory of Private Robert V. Davies, who fell in action July 31st, beloved and only son of Mrs Davies and the late R.S. Davies, printer, Llandudno. At his country’s call. Sadly missed by his mother and sisters, Mona Café, Amlwch. 

For years there was a photograph of Victor in uniform which stood in the front parlour with all the family photographs so he remained a part of their lives long after he'd gone. I've no idea what might have happened to the photograph. My cousin Elizabeth remembers decorating it with holly in the 1940s and 1950s.

My father, Norman was born in April 1919 and in a way Dad took his place as he was raised by Mary Grace, Victor's mother as Nora was too young and unmarried. It would have been out of the question for this baby to have been given away for adoption when Mary Grace had lost her only son, just two years earlier. So Norman was brought up in the family home with Edie and Bena.

Robert Victor Davies – 10th June 1897 – 31st July 1917

He was the uncle that my father never knew, as Dad was born two years after he was killed. My great aunts, Bena and Edie could have told me about him had I known to ask while they were still alive.

On a recent Writers trip to the battlefields I went to look for Victor. I knew he was one of the thousands of missing who have no known graves although I can’t help  hoping that he is somewhere in one of the cemeteries, even if all the headstone says known unto God. The only place to find a trace of Victor is amongst the names on the Menin Gate in Ypres. We visited late on a Saturday evening after the crowds had dispersed. The Royal Welsh Fusiliers are on one of the side panels, up the first flight of steps with the night sky above. It was drizzling with rain and quite dark and there he was, R.V. Davies. So easy to miss and so far from home.

The next morning I went to a florist’s in Poperinghe and bought him a rose, in creamy white with green edges to the petals. I’m sure none of the immediate family,  neither his mother nor any of his sisters will have had the chance to visit. I sat in the quiet of the chapel at Talbot house and wrote him a poem to go with the rose. Then in the evening before all the coaches arrived for the daily ceremony of the Last Post, my friend Vanessa and I put the rose in place beneath his name.