The Postcard
A postcard that was published by G. W. Beardsell of Kinross. The card was posted using a ½d. stamp on Thursday the 6th. September 1917. It was sent to:
Mrs. H. Newby,
Towngreen,
Wymondham,
Norfolk
The message on the divided back of the card was as follows:
"6/9/17.
Private Woods received
letters sent. He is very
pleased to have news, &
is grateful for all news.
He is getting on very well
and out every day now.
Please write to him again."
A Very Short Tenure
So what else happened on the day that the card was posted?
Well, on the 6th. September 1917, Vice-Admiral Sir Rosslyn Wemyss (pronounced "Weems") was appointed Deputy First Sea Lord for the British Admiralty.
However he was relieved of his position after only 21 days on the 27th. September by Vice-Admiral Herbert L. Heath.
Wemyss was the senior British representative at the signing of the Armistice that ended active hostilities in the Great War. It was Wemyss who made the decision, much to the anger of British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, to have the ceasefire to come into effect at 11.00 a.m.
Lloyd George wanted it to take place at 2.30 p.m. so that he could make the dramatic announcement in the House of Commons.
Wemyss however realised that 11 a.m on the 11th. day of the 11th. month had a strong, poetic quality about it; besides, by 2.30 p.m. more soldiers would have been unnecessarily killed.
After the war Rosslyn lived in Cannes where he died in his garden on the 24th. May 1933. He was buried at Wemyss Castle, his ancestral home on the Fife coast in Scotland.
The National Eisteddfod of Wales
Also on that day, at the National Eisteddfod of Wales, held in Birkenhead, England, the Chairing of the Bard ceremony ended dramatically with the honorary chair being draped in black to signify that the winner, Hedd Wyn, had died a month earlier in battle.
Hedd Wyn, who was born Ellis Humphrey Evans on the 13th. January 1887, was a Welsh-language poet who was killed on the first day of the Battle of Passchendaele. He was 30 years of age when he died.
Hedd Wyn was fatally wounded within the first few hours of the start of the Third Battle of Ypres on the 31st. July, 1917. He fell during the Battle of Pilckem Ridge which had begun at 3:50 a.m. with a heavy bombardment of the German lines (this was the opening attack in what became known as Battle of Passchendaele).
However, the troops' advance was hampered by incoming artillery and machine gun fire, and by heavy rain turning the battlefield into a swamp.
Hedd Wyn, as part of the 1st. London Welsh, was advancing towards a German strongpoint – created within the ruins of the Belgian hamlet of Hagebos ("Iron Cross") – when he was hit.
In an interview conducted in 1975, Simon Jones, a veteran of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, recalled:
"We started over the Canal Bank at Ypres, and
he was killed half way across Pilckem. I've heard
many say that they were with Hedd Wyn and this
and that, well I was with him.
I saw him fall, and I can say that it was a nosecap
shell in his stomach that killed him. You could tell
that... He was going in front of me, and I saw him
fall on his knees and grab two fistfuls of dirt...
He was dying, of course... There were stretcher
bearers coming up behind us, you see. There was
nothing – well, you'd be breaking the rules if you
went to help someone who was injured when you
were in an attack."
Soon after being wounded, Hedd Wyn was carried to a first-aid post. Still conscious, he asked the doctor "Do you think I will live?" though it was clear that he had little chance of surviving; he died at about 11:00 a.m.
Among the fatalities that day was the Irish war poet, Francis Ledwidge, who was "blown to bits" while drinking tea in a shell hole.
Hedd Wyn was laid to rest at Artillery Wood Cemetery, near Boezinge. His headstone was given the additional words Y Prifardd Hedd Wyn (English: "The Chief Bard, Hedd Wyn").
Philipp von Boeselager
The 6th. September 1917 also marked the birth, in Burg Heimerzheim, Germany, of the German army officer Philipp von Boeselager.
Phillipp, who was a member of the 20th. July plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, died in 2008.