NIGEL Heins’ recent article on the Christmas Truce of 1914 was fascinating, but for one Herefordshire wife December 25, 1914 would be remembered because that was the day that her soldier husband, 37-year-old Private William Beavan, was killed in action.

Born in Shottesdon, Shropshire, William was sent to live with his Uncle William and Aunt Sarah Davies at Shawl Cottage, Titley. His uncle was a garden labourer and, by 1891, William was helping him. Before long, the attraction of better wages in South Wales drew William to Merthyr Tydfil where, by 1911, he was a foreman in a steel works. By then he had married Isabella, from Little Brampton.

In 1914 William enlisted at Merthyr, joining the 2nd Battalion of the Welsh Regiment. This had been in France since August and by the time William arrived in a group of re-enforcements on November 29, it had suffered 660 casualties. By Christmas, the fighting had died down along about two-thirds of the British front, but in the rest vicious fighting continued and on Christmas Day there were a number of casualties, including Private Beavan. His wife later remarried and lived in Weobley.

Sad though William’s fate was, there was one death even more heart-rending. Mrs Emma Dolphin had lost her husband in 1900, leaving her to bring up her child, Henry George, alone.

The little boy was born on September 18, 1899 and christened at Horfield, Gloucestershire, on December 10, 1899. Mrs Dolphin must have struggled to keep her family on a meagre laundress’s wages. How Henry got past the recruiting officers in Cardiff in 1914 is a mystery but he was allowed to join the 2nd Welsh and, like William Beavan arrived in France on November 29, 1914, and was also killed on Christmas Day.

He was just 15. Both are commemorated on the Le Touret Memorial, for neither has a known grave. Mrs Dolphin put sad memorial notices in the local papers for years afterwards.

R H DAVIES Gilbert’s Wood, Ewyas Harold