Fighting On All Fronts

New Exhibition

The Royal Welsh Fusiliers

Opening at Wrexham County Borough Museum

Monday, September 12th to November 26th 2016

The latest exhibition at Wrexham Museum explores the story of the Royal Welch Fusiliers, the oldest regiment in Wales, during the First World War through the historic objects, archives and images held in the reserve collection of the Royal Welch Fusiliers Museum.

The Royal Welsh Fusiliers fought throughout the conflict. The regiment landed on French soil in early August 1914, faced destruction at Ypres, withstood the bitter war of attrition known as the battle of the Somme, lasted the Gallipoli campaign, and fought on five different fronts until the armistice on 11 November 1918.

 

 

 

The exhibition includes a wide range of artefacts:

• Pencil sketches of life on the front line by internationally important modernist artist, David Jones, who served with the 15th Battalion (1st London Welsh)
• A German machine gun captured by C Company, 9th Battalion, in 1917
• Siegfried Sassoon’s Browning pistol — the world-famous war poet was an officer in the regiment
• Gallantry medals, awarded to Stanley Davies, Welsh international footballer and coal miner from Chirk
• Campaign medals, awarded to Frank Jones, the Wrexham postal clerk from Smith-field Road, Wrexham, who travelled the world as a soldier and who was twice wounded before finally accepting he could no longer serve on the front line
• Previously unseen artwork by Lieutenant Richard Lunt Roberts depicting his experiences at Gallipoli and in Egypt and Palestine
• Soldier’s souvenirs from France (German helmets), Egypt (embroidery and beaded snakes) and Palestine (individually inscribed helmets)
• The [in]famous Welsh trench knives commissioned by Lord Howard de Walden of Chirk Castle for hand to hand fighting in the trenches
• All the ‘dead man’s pennies’ in the reserve collection in a unique memorial tribute and many more objects, each with their own story.

---