No. 33 - No-one Knew Where Hughie Was

Old snaps in a St Bruno tin.

Apart from the the odd school shots of their children, my parents did not have photographs of relatives dotted all over the place. My mother would doubtless have considered them clutter that she'd have had to dust around. Throughout my childhood, there was a large, framed, baby photograph of my naked father hanging on the kitchen wall, but with hindsight it was very out of character. I’ve come to assume that it must have amused my mother to have it there, or perhaps it was an in joke. Or it may have disappeared as soon as my paternal grandmother died.

There were plenty of old snaps though, shut away out of sight, stuffed into tattered buff envelopes or an old St Bruno tobacco tin. Always curious about the past, I would fish out these sepia and black and white photos and ask questions about who and when. I was just a child, so I never asked about the names I heard, but whose faces I never saw - like Uncle Hughie. 

Mum had seven siblings most of whom we saw periodically, but we never saw Hughie. Apart from a childhood group photo, it seemed there were no photos of him.

'2 Llyn'

As a child I loved to listen to the reminiscences of the older members of the family, about people I could not see, more often than not because they were dead. Both my maternal grandparents and their eldest child Kate died before I was born and yet, through the affectionate words of my mother and her sisters they became real to me. 

Mum recalled her family home at 2 Llyn Crescent, Ferndale, with great fondness. The sizeable four bedroom terraced house had to accommodate her mother and father, their eight children and one or two lodgers besides. The comings and goings gave it the flavour of a busy railway station buffet with two great brass-handled iron kettles on the range always on the boil. Because of different jobs and schools, meals were staggered with Grampa’s lunch being served very shortly after Hughie’s breakfast. Mum recalled “I had no time to do anything - just lay the table and clear up! For years nobody saw it without food or dishes on it.” Everyone in the busy household had their own chores to do - another of Mum’s was cutting squares of newspaper for use in the icy, slug-infested toilet outside. 

Stories of Uncle Hughie particularly intrigued me. Four years older than Mum, the sixth of eight children, he was spoken of with as much affection as any of them, but it seemed that he was the cat that walked by himself, and no-one really knew him. At school he was a very bright pupil, but he didn’t get the higher schools certificate that was the key to a university education - the ‘Oxford Senior.’ Certification required a second language. He was reasonably proficient at Latin, even though it would have been no use at all to him, but at quite a late stage he bowed to local authority pressure to swap Latin for Welsh. Learning that language over such a short period proved too great a challenge, and his college ambitions were frustrated. His siblings believed that he carried a chip on his shoulder about it for the rest of his life. 

William Owen, the eldest boy had started work as a miner at Ferndale No 5 Pit, but despite his Oxford Senior disappointment, Hughie was to avoid that fate. With his brother Dick, he got an apprenticeship with Rhondda Urban District Council. They were meant to learn stone masonry, their father's trade, but they ended up mostly weeding and painting railings in the park.

At the family's rare quiet times Mum recalled, “We’d all sit around the piano in the middle room and have a good old sing-song. Everyone would be there, the whole family… except Hughie. Nobody ever knew where Hughie was.” 

Photographs

Uncle Hughie (R) with 'bloody Dilwyn Davies.'

When my mother’s sister Annie May died in 1998, amongst her belongings I found many family photos I had never seen before, and a number of them turned out to be of Hughie. When I asked about a shot of two young men seated in the park, Mum became quite uncomfortable. “That’s your uncle Hughie" she said pointing at the pleasant-looking bespectacled young man on the right. “And who is that?” I asked about his mate. “Hmph! That’s bloody Dilwyn Davies and he was a pest! He wouldn’t leave your Uncle Hughie alone.” While it was clear that poor Dilwyn did not meet with her approval, she chose not to elaborate. 

Telegram

The new found stash included several photos featuring Hughie in uniform. In 1939, when war broke out, he was the only one from the large family to enlist as he was fit for military service and he was not in a reserved occupation. He became a South Wales Borderer and went off to fight.

Corporal Hugh Rowland Hughes

Scrubbed clean and kitted out in smart uniforms Post Office Messenger Boys may have appeared quite angelic, but soon, as the world war unfolded, they were to become regarded as angels of death. Many war-time films feature the arrival of such a messenger boy bringing a telegram, invariably when the story is about to take a darker turn. Such a telegram was delivered to 2 Llyn Crescent, Ferndale, my grandfather’s house. His son Hughie, now in Burma with the 6th Battalion of the South Wales Borderers, had been reported ‘missing, believed killed.’

It was only when I asked my mother about the photos of Hughie in uniform that I was told the tale of the telegram. I was astonished that I hadn’t heard it before, even though she told me that it had been reported on the wireless. It seems that things that would have become the stuff of legends in most families were quietly forgotten in ours. Hughie’s battalion was part of the British 14th Army, the ‘Forgotten Army,’ that fought the Japanese in Burma. During one fierce jungle skirmish close to the Irrawaddy, he disappeared and was reported missing in action. 

'With love, Hughie.'

The family members grieved in private, but people all over the country were receiving similar bad news every day and everyone just had to get on with it. My grandmother Eliza seemed particularly calm about the apparent loss of her second youngest son, to the point that some may have considered her callous. When her husband remarked on her relative serenity she said:

“Well Hugh bach, we don’t know anything for sure. And when have we ever known where Hughie is? All that telegram means is that now, the British Army doesn’t know where he is. He’ll turn up sooner or later - he always does.”

My grandfather may have thought she was deluding herself, but fourteen days after he went missing, he did exactly that. He was hungry and jungle-beaten but otherwise unharmed. Indeed, having survived fighting the Japanese and two weeks hopelessly lost in the Burmese jungle, Corporal Hughes was absolutely livid when he had to have a tooth extracted on the troop ship home - the only lasting physical effect of his war. Doubtless there were psychological effects, but he never spoke of them. He didn’t tell his family about things he’d seen or things he’d had to do.

Hughie, back row, second left, with some of his army comrades in Burma.

After the war

Uncle Hughie did not go on to become a teacher like so many in the family - after discharge he managed to find an office job with an aluminium company in Newport, where he did very well for himself. Unlike all my other aunts and uncles he never married. He wasn’t often mentioned at home although whenever he was, it was always with that same great affection. It was accepted by the family that he chose to live his life in an apparently solitary way, and no one implied that he was inconsiderate or uncaring for doing so.

In October 1968, at the relatively young age of fifty-six, Hughie died. I never met him, although we may at some point have occupied the same room when I was a babe in arms. Although only nine, I sensed a great sadness in my mother at his loss - he evidently mattered a great deal to her. Leaving me in the care of my father, she went south for the funeral and to take part in the sad ritual of sorting through Hughie's belongings. She came home with an occasional table with screw on legs, which became an important part of our living room until the day she died. 

What I’ve written here is built on anecdotes from my mother and aunts, sparked by the old photographs reproduced here. Although I wonder about Hughie, apart from the few hard facts I have been able to check, I can be certain of nothing about his life. I earnestly hope that whoever he really was, he found something or someone to make him happy.

Not so solitary Hughie, out with friends.

My brother recalled meeting him at our cousin’s wedding in January 1968, where he apparently expressed relief that there was another member of the family who liked a pint, which further endears him to me and grants me another ghost with whom to drink.