A Torfaen at War Digital Story

Glanville Oakey’s Digital Story Transcript

I can’t remember much about the First World War, I was young. My father joined up when he was about 16. I expect he thought he’d better go and he and joined and that was it. A lot of people in Abergavenny that age joined up. He was a private. Third Royal Welsh regiment. I know he was in the battle of Ypres and Somme, Belgium. He never said much about it, he was quiet, very quiet you know. Never said much about the war or the army or anything. I thought it was horrible what they went through in the trenches and all that. Terrible war wasn’t it. He got gassed I think and he got chest trouble a lot. He marched through Germany near the end of the war. He didn’t say a lot about it. He had some photographs, I don’t know where they’ve got to now, when he was in the army and on his horse. I thought they were good photographs in his uniform. He liked the German people, he lodged there with them. He went back to his trade then. On the railway it was, station painter on the railway. He always wanted to go back over to Germany or France with him and my mother. But she would never go abroad. He always wanted to go back to France or Belgium. He always tried to persuade her to go back over there and see it all.

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