\u201cI\u2019ve always been interested in Welsh<\/a> history, so it\u2019s natural for me to want to know how my family fit in. I\u2019ve amassed a lot of information on all of my lines: 15 of my 16 great great grandparents were Welsh, and one is of Cornish<\/a> ancestry \u2013 the Eustis branch.\u201d<\/p> Gethin\u2019s initial area of academic interest was the Welsh overseas, but his focus has been on the Welsh during the First World War for the past decade. \u201cBack in 2010, no Welsh historians were looking at the war, so I thought I\u2019d build up my expertise in the area as we headed towards the centenary.\u201d<\/p> He knew of the three brothers \u2013 his grandfather\u2019s cousins \u2013 but didn\u2019t know any details about them. In fact, he had no idea that they\u2019d served in the First World War until 2010. \u201cI was running a project with the aim of getting material out of Welsh family archives and digitising it.\u201d A few years into the project, a serendipitous meeting brought a stash of letters to Gethin\u2019s attention.<\/p> \u201cQuite by chance in 2015, I met a chap called Ian Eustis and we discovered that we are quite closely related; he was my father\u2019s second cousin. One day Ian said to me, \u2018I\u2019ve got something I think will be of interest to you.\u2019 And he came to see me with a box containing 100 letters written by the three brothers during the war.\u201d It was a real \u2018wow\u2019 moment for Gethin: \u201dIn all the work I\u2019ve been doing, it was very rare to find a family that had preserved more than a dozen letters \u2013 it was all very exciting.\u201d<\/p> Gethin set about studying the missives. \u201cBecause they were so detailed, the brothers\u2019 personalities came through. You got to know their relationships within the family, and how they changed as individuals between 1914 and 1918. To be able to track all that through the four years of the war was fantastic.\u201d<\/p> Richard (born 1893), the eldest brother, was the first to join up. He and his friends had enlisted in the Welsh Field Ambulance Unit in 1913, seeing the two weeks\u2019 training at a camp in Aberystwyth as a kind of paid holiday. \u201cThey were in the camp in July 1914, so they were literally already in uniform when the war started.\u201d In theory they had a choice whether to become regular soldiers, but the friends all joined up together. Richard\u2019s unit was sent to Gallipoli and from there to Egypt. They then followed the fighting through Palestine \u2013 including at the Battle of Gaza (1917), where he was a stretcher-bearer.<\/p> Before the war, Gabriel (born 1895) had a job in a tinplate works in Morriston, north Swansea. \u201cGabriel joined up on 7 November 1914 and became a wireless telegraph operator, and served on a converted trawler HMT Saxon<\/em>, which patrolled the North Atlantic. They were the eyes of the Navy, looking out for submarines or enemy shipping. He served on the boat until the end of the war.\u201d<\/p> The youngest brother Ivor (born 1897) was very bright academically. He was conscripted in 1916 shortly after his 18th birthday, and joined the Royal Welsh Fusiliers. \u201cBecause he was such a good teacher, instead of being sent straight to the trenches, he stayed at the camp in North Wales as an instructor for a year,\u201d says Gethin. Ivor was sent to the Western Front in December 1917. \u201cHe won the Military Medal, and was promoted to sergeant.\u201d In August 1918, at the beginning of the Hundred Days Offensive that ended the war, shrapnel from a shell blast lodged in his temple. He was invalided back to Wales, and awaited demob in Ireland.<\/p> While Ian\u2019s letters were a godsend for Gethin\u2019s research, the collection wasn\u2019t complete. However, by using other sources Gethin could cross-reference the contents and fill in some gaps.<\/p> Relations provided postcards and old photographs<\/a>. One of them had Gethin confused for a while. \u201cIt\u2019s a photograph of Gabriel wearing a soldier\u2019s uniform, and Ivor wearing a sailor\u2019s uniform.\u201d They\u2019d swapped clothes before the picture was taken. \u201cIt tells you a lot about their fraternal bond.\u201d<\/p> Gethin also turned to the National Library of Wales\u2019 free online resource, Welsh Newspapers<\/a>. \u201cTwo of the Swansea newspapers have been digitised, so I was able to pick up a lot of information about many of the people who were mentioned in the letters. It\u2019s just fantastic!\u201d<\/p> Rolls of honour from local chapels showed those who had enlisted with Richard. \u201cYou could see the whole community\u2019s commitment to the war \u2013 so many families had sons who went to fight in Egypt or Palestine.\u201d<\/p>Priceless correspondence<\/h2>
![\"A](\"https:\/\/c02.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/52\/2023\/11\/Ivor-Eustis-Gabriel-Eustis-SEE-THE-COMMENTS-scaled.jpeg\")
A community’s courage<\/h2>