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Neither of the Regiment's two Regular battalions was part of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). The 1st was recalled from abroad and landed in France in October 1914; the 2nd, too late on arrival in England to be included in the original BEF, joined it in late August after a period as Lines of Communications troops. The 1/4th – a pre-war Territorial Force battalion from Flintshire – arrived in France in December 1914 and by June 1916 was a Pioneer battalion.

The other seven battalions consisted of men who had answered Lord Kitchener's call for volunteers early in the war. Five of these 'New Army' battalions (13th-17th RWF)  were in brigades (113th and 115th) which formed part of the 38th (Welsh) Division – Lloyd George's 'Welsh Army'.

Only the 1st and 9th Battalions took part in the first day of the battle, 1 July, at the villages of Fricourt and La Boiselle respectively. Being in reserve, their losses were light, in marked contrast to those of the British Army as a whole which, in all, suffered over 57,000 casualties, of whom 19,240 were killed. But between 5 and 12 July, the Royal Welch Fusiliers, particularly in those battalions which formed part of the 38th (Welsh) Division, were to be embroiled in a part of the wider battle whose name will always be synonymous with the courage of the Welsh soldier – Mametz Wood.

The fight for and eventual capture of this piece of dense woodland was described by Wyn Griffith, one of many outstanding writers who served in the Regiment, as:

            … the horror of our way of life and death and of our crucifixion of youth.

The Wood was strategically important and strongly defended by German infantry and artillery; successive assaults on 7 to 8 July failed as the advancing troops were cut down while crossing open ground. About this, the Commander in Chief, Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig wrote in his diary that:

          The 38th Welsh Division had not advanced with determination to the attack

 – a totally unjustifiable accusation based on incomplete information. In fact the 115th Brigade lost more than 600 men in this stage of the battle.

However, a renewed attack by the 113th and 114th Brigades (the former consisting of four RWF battalions) early on 10 July gained a foothold in the Wood, and until late the following day Welsh battalions fought their way through the chaotic, shattered and bewildering mass of broken timber and dense undergrowth against an unseen enemy, preceded by a creeping artillery barrage which added to the deafening noise and further uprooted or brought down trees. To add to the horror and confusion, this even fell at times on their own men. But on the night of 11/12 July the Germans withdrew from the Wood, leaving behind hundreds of dead. As Colin Hughes has written in his fine account of the battle – which in part redresses Haig's hasty judgement –

      … its capture can be attributed wholly to the 38th (Welsh) Division …

But the cost to the Division was very high – in all it lost nearly 4,000 men including 600 killed and as many missing. The five RWF battalions lost well over 1,000 men including four out of five commanding officers: it should be remembered that not one man in the Division had been trained to fight in thick woodland, and for the majority this was their first experience of battle. 

On 16 July Robert Graves, who was with the 2nd Battalion RWF, was bivouacked outside Mametz Wood among the dead of the Regiment's New Army battalions. He went into the wood and later, in his poem 'A Dead Boche' recaptured his reaction to the destruction and death he had seen there:

Today I found in Mametz Wood
A certain cure for lust of blood.

In the days that followed, the fighting on this sector of the front moved to the north and east of Mametz Wood in the area of part of the enemy's second system of defences. On 14 July, the 1st Battalion took part in the 22nd Brigade's successful assault on Bazentin-le-Petit village and played a notable part in repulsing subsequent German counter-attacks; and on 18th July the 10th Battalion distinguished itself in the attack on Delville Wood – two of its number, Corporal J.J.Davies and Private A.Hill, were awarded the Victoria Cross on that day; but the Battalion lost 228 men, including 15 officers, in this part of the action. Some weeks later, Lt-Colonel Stockwell, the officer commanding the1st Battalion RWF, wrote:

            Delville Wood is indescribable. Dead and bits of people everywhere. Our trenches choked with dead and the stench something awful. 

On 20 July the 2nd Battalion drove the enemy out of High Wood but was subsequently ordered to withdraw – their Commanding Officer wrote of his men,

I have never seen such a magnificent and wonderful disregard for   death as I saw that day. It was almost uncanny it was so great

– but of the 706 men who went into the wood, fewer than 100 emerged unwounded.

As 1916 wore on, the two regular battalions and the 10th Battalion continued to fight on the Somme, and the names of French villages such as Pozières, Guillemont, Morval and the River Ancre were added to the Regiment's Somme Battle Honours. The First Battle of the Somme was officially declared as ending on 18 November 1916 – by then, this once pleasant and fertile part of France had been reduced to a nightmare landscape of desolation, destruction, ruin and mud.

[To view a map please click here]

But before then, shortly after the battle for Mametz Wood ended, the 38th (Welsh)Division, including its RWF battalions had, as Colin Hughes has written

            ..neither glory nor distinction … noticeably bestowed upon them [but] instead were bundled unceremoniously away to a quiet sector of the front, and took no further part in the fighting on the Somme.

However they were not forgotten, for today the splendid red dragon of Wales, once the proud emblem of the 38th (Welsh) Division, confronts Mametz Wood, the place where so many Welshmen fell exactly ninety years ago.