Joseph Thomas Edwards"

1916

see 158.21 for a photo of Jack Edwards.

A note on Joseph Thomas and Jack Edwards with information from Pam Millington.

Joseph and Jack Edwards, brothers, of Alltami, Mold, were my mother's nephews and my first cousins.

Pam Millington's mother Charlotte was Joseph's daughter, so I think Jack would have been Pam's great-uncle and Joseph her grandfather. Pre-1914, Joseph was an engine winding gear man in the colliery and Jack a collier.

I think they must have joined up early in the 1914 war, Joseph serving in France and Jack serving in the Middle East against the Turks, both in the Royal Welch Fusiliers. Joseph became a machine gunner and was killed at Arras in March 1918. If so it would be the great spring offensive launched by the Germans March 21^st when Field Marshal Haig's famous order of the day was "No retreat; backs to the wall". Being a machine gunner was a dangerous occupation as they had to stand their ground to the end.

A comrade of Joseph's in the Fusiliers was John Evans of Mold from either Maes-y-Dre or Milford Street, Bro Alun, who after the battle was collecting the dead bodies off the battlefield. He told Charlotte, Joseph's daughter, what a sad time it was.

Jack was in General Allenby's army fighting the Turks in the Middle East, pre-1918: Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine were all part of the Ottoman Empire (Turkish) and when Allenby entered Jerusalem in 1917 they were the first Christians to hold the city since the crusades of the 11^th and 12^th centuries.

Jack wrote to my mother that on Christmas Day he was camped on the Mount of Olives and it was snowing. Jack went to live in St. Helen's around 1914. He could have lived for a time with grandparents, Peter and Ann Griffiths at Ash View, Alltami?

Author: Roberts, Trefor

Joseph Thomas Edwards"

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