Cricket Witness No 5 - Whites on Green

56 Swansea at war a brigade of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers. 1916 saw Williams and the Swansea Battalion travel to France where they were thrown into the attack on Mametz Wood in which so many Welshmen lost their lives. Williams, himself, was severely wounded advancing up the slope leading to the wood and it was feared that he would die in the ambulance train. For a long period “he lay between life and death”, and his actions won him the Military Cross, but this was of little comfort as so many of his comrades and friends lost their lives. He returned to the battalion in 1917, and subsequently showed outstanding leadership at Ypres, with his regiment going over the top at Pilkem Ridge and routing the crack Prussian “Cockchafers”. It was an action which deservedly earned him the DSO. In the same year his “Swansea’s” also won high honours in an attack on the salient known as Caesar’s Nose, and subsequently figured in the Ancre crossing and the engagements at Auveley Wood and the River Selle. During the peace negotiations in 1918 Lieutenant Colonel Williams was also chosen to act as a guide to Prime Minister Lloyd George over the Somme battlefield. It was no surprise therefore that in December he succeeded Colonel Brooke to the command of the Swansea Battalion. He was pleased as well to observe the return of sporting activities to St. Helen’s with cricket matches during 1918 with games against a number of military teams including the Lancashire Fusiliers as well as Swansea Grammar School, whilst in May 1918 St. Helen’s had a well-attended baseball match with teams drawn from personnel representing Canada and their counterparts from the USA. Canada won 13-3. 3 But the war had taken its toll, and if truth were known, he never fully recovered from the bloody horrors with the man who marched through Swansea at the head of his battalion in June 1919 to present the colours to the Mayor being a very different fellow to the happy and jolly man who had marched off to war five years before. In July 1919 he was invalided out of the Army, largely as a result of the injury to a lung sustained whilst on the Somme, and he returned to live with his mother and brothers at Killay House. He did not, however, return to the legal profession, and instead engaged in a stock and share business. This failed, as did the Welsh Aviation Company in which he had speculated. He continued to play a bit of cricket and continued to serve as Glamorgan’s Treasurer, although his heart was not really in the Club’s affairs and he only agreed to carry on to help out his old friend Tom Whittington who was now actively seeking assurances and support from English counties to support Glamorgan’s campaign for first-class status Whittington was fortunate enough in the Autumn of 1920 to secure the minimum of eight home and away fixtures with existing first-class counties, and there was great celebration when the MCC endorsed Glamorgan’s application to join the County Championship in 1921. By this time, Williams’ best years were behind him but he still managed to make an appearance in first-class cricket, at the ripe old age of 44, as he appeared