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Men Famous But Unknown
Alekudemus


Joined: 15 Feb 2006
Posts: 147
Location: Monmouthshire/Gwent
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SOUTH Wales DAILY POST CHRISTMAS EVE 1900

MEN FAMOUS, BUT UNKNOWN." A Welsh HERO OF Rorke's DRIFT. The January number of the "Windsor Magazine" includes, in an interesting article on "Men Famous but Unknown," the biography and portrait of John Williams, V.C., Cwmbran. Of him the writer observes "If you go to the nut and bolt works at Cwm- bran, South Wales, you may today see a middle-aged in an (none too strong in health, sometimes, from his exertions on that fearful January night) working as a common labourer in order to earn enough to buy him his daily bread. A man of fair complexion, he is hard-working. honest and respectable. When he is 'dressed-up,' there appears on his chest that little Maltese Cross, with its magic words, 'For Valour.' This is the man who saved the patients in the hospital at Rorke's Drift. This is the man who stayed behind in the burning place when surrounded by hordes of Zulus, looking in at the windows watching with savage joy) their fiendish work the man who refused to leave the charnel house whilst a single sick or wounded soldier was left in it; the man who, with the brave cook, defied the whole host of Zulus to inter that blazing building if they dared. This is the man who. at last, smashed through the thick wall and literally dragged the wounded soldiers after him, one by one, till he l ad dropped them all bodily into the yard just below where the brave Hitch was trying .to keep the savages at bay with his rifle-fire, so as to make a clear passage for the patients to cross into safety. And to-day this man has to earn a. scanty living as a common labourer, and to toil as best he can at such hard work as a nut and bolt factory affords if he wishes to have bread to eat." By the way, a comrade of Williams on that famous occasion was David Jenkins, now in the employ of the Swansea Corporation.
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johnk


Joined: 18 Oct 2010
Posts: 64
Location: St.Helens, Merseyside
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Men Famous But Unknown
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