Having a Go at the Kaiser

Gethin Matthews

Description

This book is based on more than a hundred letters sent home by three Swansea brothers during the First World War, almost all of which relate to the period 1916–18 when Richard, Gabriel and Ivor Eustis were serving in different theatres. The run of letters written to different members of the family allow us to build a picture of what the brothers thought about a range of different issues as the war was being waged, and of how their beliefs and ideas evolved as situations changed. In common with other soldiers’ letters to their families, information on the battles fought is scarce – they are rather concerned with keeping the family bonds strong during the men’s absence. The dynamics of the family are revealed in letters full of sibling rivalry and affection.

Acknowledgements
Tables
Maps
Illustrations
Abbreviations
1. Introduction – The Eustis family; the local community; the letters
2. Richard and Gabriel, 1913 – 1915
3. Richard Eustis in Egypt, 1916 – February 1917
4. Ivor Eustis at school, 1914–1916, and in north Wales, May–November 1916
5. Gabriel Eustis aboard HMT Saxon, to February 1917
6. Richard Eustis in Egypt, March 1917 – January 1918
7. Ivor Eustis in north Wales, 1917
8. Richard Eustis in Palestine and Egypt, February 1918 – June 1918
9. Ivor Eustis on the Western Front, December 1917 – September 1918
10. Gabriel Eustis aboard HMT Saxon, November 1917 – October 1918
11. Richard Eustis in Egypt, July 1918 – November 1918
12. Ivor Eustis in England and Wales, October – November 1918
13. November 1918 – January 1919
14. Aftermath
15. Patterns and Perspectives
Appendix 1 List of all the extant letters and postcards sent by the Eustis brothers
Appendix 2 Servicemen from Mynyddbach / Tirdeunaw / Treboeth mentioned in the text
Appendix 3 Information on servicemen from other parts of Swansea and West Glamorgan mentioned in the text
Select Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Histoire
• Great Britain
• History
• Europe

Informations

• Publié par: University of Wales Press
• Date de parution: 15 octobre 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781786833488
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 68 Mo

Extrait

Having a go at the KAISER

Having a go at the KAISER A Welsh Family at War

G E T H I N M AT T H E W S

UNIVERSITY OF WALES PRESS 2018

© Gethin Matthews, 2018

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Applications for the copyright owner’s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the University of Wales Press, University Registry, King Edward VII Avenue, Cardiff CF10 3NS.

www.uwp.co.uk

British Library CataloguinginPublication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN eISBN

9781786833471 9781786833488

The right of Gethin Matthews to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 79 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Typeset by Marie Doherty Printed by CPI Antony Rowe, Melksham.

For a chess player, an optimist and a cricketer

Contents

Acknowledgements Illustrations Abbreviations

 1. Introduction – the Eustis family; the local community; the letters  2. Richard and Gabriel, 1913–1915  3. Richard Eustis in Egypt, 1916–February 1917

 4. Ivor Eustis at school, 1914–1916, and in north Wales, May–November 1916  5. Gabriel Eustis aboardHMT Saxon, to February 1917  6. Richard Eustis in Egypt, March 1917–January 1918

 7. Ivor Eustis in north Wales, 1917  8. Richard Eustis in Palestine and Egypt, February 1918–June 1918  9. Ivor Eustis on the Western Front, December 1917–September 1918

10. Gabriel Eustis aboardHMT Saxon, November 1917–October 1918 11. Richard Eustis in Egypt, July 1918–November 1918 12. Ivor Eustis in England and Wales, October–November 1918

13. November 1918–January 1919

14. Aftermath 15. Patterns and perspectives

ix xi xii

1

33 49 63

97 105 129 147

167

195

217 229

235 257 265

viii

Having a go at the Kaiser

Appendix 1: List of all the extant letters and postcards sent by the Eustis brothers Appendix 2: Servicemen from Mynyddbach/Tirdeunaw/ Treboeth mentioned in the text Appendix 3: Information on servicemen from other parts of Swansea and West Glamorgan mentioned in the text

Select bibliography Index

293

297

301

302 305

Acknowledgements

he first I heard of the story of the Eustis brothers at war was T in 2010–11, when I was running the ‘Welsh Voices of the Great War Online’ project at Cardiff University. Marianne Eustis told me the outline of the story, though she had few concrete details of the war service of her uncles Richard and Ivor Eustis. She shared photographs of her father, Gabriel, in his Royal Navy uniform, but had no written matter by him. I was interested, because these were my grandfather’s cousins, but in truth I did not pursue the research because I had many other collections to study, where there was a wealth of written material. In 2013–14 I coordinated a HLFfunded project at Treboeth, centred upon the Roll of Honour at Caersalem Newydd Baptist Chapel. With a lot of help from the community, it was possible to piece together not just the story of the eightyone men listed on that memorial, but also of the impact of the war upon their families and the whole community. The sources unearthed by the project gave me much information about the activities of Richard Eustis’s unit, the 3rd Welsh Field Ambulance, as a dozen Caersalem men served alongside him. It became clear that this was a ‘local’ story with a very broad sweep: many of these men, like Richard, were members of the Treboeth Temperance Brass Band who enlisted as Territorials in July 1913, and then served together in England, Gallipoli, Egypt and Palestine from the very beginning of the war through to 1919. Then in 2015, quite by chance, I got to know Ian Eustis, son of Daniel, the younger brother of Richard, Gabriel and Ivor. One day he said to me, ‘I have something that I think will interest you’, which has turned out to be something of an understatement. He entrusted to me a small box full of the family’s treasures. I did not expect the quantity of letters that had been preserved thanks to the parents, and then the sisters Bess Ann and Lottie Eustis: only one other family collection that I had encountered while running the ‘Welsh Voices’ project had more than a dozen letters in total. It