In the final part of a series of features marking the 100th anniversary of the Second Battle of Ypres, Martin Wade looks at the role played by the 2nd Battalion of the Monmouthshire Regiment which was based in Pontypool.

CRANE Street station no longer stands in Pontypool, but in its time it hosted perhaps its most dramatic scene as hundreds of local soldiers went to war in 1914.

They were the men of the 2nd Battalion the Monmouthshire Regiment (2nd Mons), and few survivors of the carnage of Ypres would step back on this platform when the war was at an end.

The 2nd Mons had its headquarters at Pontypool but was also made up of men from Abercarn, Blaenavon, Crumlin, Cwmbran, Llanhilleth, Monmouth and Usk.

The unit was unique in the territorial forces as it was the first Territorial Army battalion to go into the trenches in 1914.

The three battalions of the Monmouthshire Regiment were serving near to each other on the Ypres salient as the battle took hold.

The 1st Mons of Newport and Islwyn were stationed near Frezenberg. The 3rd from Abergavenny and Blaenau Gwent just to the south. The 2nd Mons were just to the north.

The 1st and the 3rd Mons lost hundreds of men to rifle and shellfire during the Second Battle of Ypres but the 2nd Mons were subjected to the horror of gas warfare too as it made its debut on the battlefield.

The first use of chlorine gas came at sunrise on April 22 when 5,700 canisters containing 168 tons of chlorine gas were released against French troops. They fled, throwing down their rifles, blinded and retching violently. It was later used against Canadian troops who the 2nd Mons were to relieve.

Chlorine gas forms an acid when combined with moisture in the air, destroying moist tissues like lungs and eyes. Those who lived were temporarily blinded and stumbled on in confusion, coughing heavily.

Survivors told of men “frothing at the mouth, eyes starting from their sockets” as they suffered a violent and painful death. The chlorine gas, being denser than air, quickly filled trenches, forcing the troops to climb out into heavy enemy fire.

On May 2, the 2nd Mons experienced the heaviest shelling they had yet encountered. Later in the day, the enemy launched a fierce attack under cover of asphyxiating gas.

By this time allied troops did not simply panic and run at the sight of gas, although they still did not have proper defences against it.

They had fashioned their own, grim protection against ‘mustard gas’.

It was found by urinating into cloths and putting them to their faces, the effects of the gas could be countered.

In the night of May 4-5 the battalion relieved the 5th South Lancashires and suffered a heavy gas attack. Luckily it was not followed up by infantry assault.

Desperate fighting continued for the following six days as the Monmouthshires struggled to hold Frezenberg Ridge.

The regimental history tells how all three battalions of the Monmouthshire Regiment came in for “very severe fighting” during May 1915. It adds: “the 2nd, coming up on the left of the line after the Canadians had been withdrawn [having been gassed] shared in the splendid defence of that part of the front they maintained almost throughout May.”

The mauling of the three battalions of Monmouthshire was so complete that by May 22, the three were merged into one.

The ages and experiences of the battalion varied considerably from the boy soldier to the veteran of the Boer War.

Rifleman Thomas Payne was 21 when he was killed on May 5, 1915. His heartbroken brother William, living with his family at 2, Prospect Bungalows, Ashley Gardens, Pontnewydd wrote a poem in memory of Thomas. Part of it reads:

“He played his part in that great drama, A soldier, young, bold and brave, But oh, how awful tis to think, That he now lies in a soldier’s grave.”

Thomas Payne, while not the youngest, was a junior member of the battalion. That honour fell to Rifleman William Leyshon. The son of William and Mary Leyshon, of 9 Ventnor Road in Cwmbran, he was only 16 when he was killed on May 13, 1915.

Rifleman Clarence Stiff was barely a year older than William Leyshon, but the 17-year-old too would never return to his home town of Cwmbran again. Described as a “fine youth, towering over six feet” Clarence Stiff was a player with Cwmbran Cricket Club and a member of the local bugle band. The grief felt at the family home on Clomendy Road when notification came on June 10 that Clarence was dead can barely be imagined.

Clarence’s father, Mr JJ Stiff by that time had been an “honoured official” of Cwmbran Wesleyan Church for 21 years, the Pontypool Free Press noted.

Drafted on to the front in February 1915, Clarence, who was a steelworker with Guest, Keen and Nettlefolds, is remembered on their memorial in Cwmbran Park and on the British Legion Memorial in St Gabriel’s Church, Cwmbran.

Another episode illustrates both the horror and the miracles which can occur side by side on the battlefield. It seemed fate had not smiled on Captain John Trevor George, a junior officer from Penygarn with the 2nd Mons.

He was struck by a bullet in the head during fighting on May 16. The medical report noted how the bullet “hit his cap badge before striking him”. A portion of the cap badge went with the bullet, but it was slowed sufficiently to save him, although part of his cap badge was embedded in his skull for some time.

A month later he was reported to have been “suffering from nervous symptoms, the result of shock” after being buried in a dug-out. A year later he was back at the front and soon later was awarded the Military Cross.

As the 2nd Mons was the first territorial battalion to go to the front in 1914, it was also the last to return to Britain in 1919, having been the only territorial battalion to march into Germany at the end of the war, although by then, very few of its 1914 intake had survived. But they came back to Crane Street Station with their standards flying and their heads held high.