Frederick Ward

 Private Frederick Ward – Welsh Regiment; Royal Defence Corps

Early Life

Frederick Ward was born in 1868 at Linton, South Cambridgeshire. Very little is known about his early life or family background, and his name appears in only one surviving census record.

1911 Census

The 1911 Census records Frederick, aged 43, living at 4 Eagle Court, Queen Street, Aberystwyth. He was employed as a Groom and was married to Martha Janet Ward (née Gittins), aged 40, who had been widowed before their marriage. Also living in the household were Martha’s two daughters from her first marriage, Gertrude Mary Gittins (14) and Sarah Ann Gittins (9).

Military Service

Service Papers

Frederick Ward’s service papers have survived, providing valuable insight into his military career. He enlisted in November 1914, at the age of 46, joining the Welsh Regiment, a unit that recruited widely from across South and West Wales.

Frederick served with the Welsh Regiment — noted in some records as the “Nall Regiment,” likely a clerical or abbreviated entry — from 1914 until 1917. During these years, the regiment saw service both at home and overseas, supplying men to front-line battalions fighting in France, Flanders, and the Balkans.

In 1917, Frederick was transferred to the Royal Defence Corps (R.D.C.), an organisation formed in 1916 to provide home-defence duties throughout the United Kingdom. The R.D.C. was composed largely of older or medically unfit soldiers, many of whom were veterans of earlier campaigns. Their duties included guarding military installations, prisoner-of-war camps, and coastal defences — vital work that released younger men for active service abroad.

Death

Frederick Ward
Oystermouth Cemetery
credit - findagrave

Frederick Ward died on 15^th August 1921, aged 53. At the time of his death, his home address was recorded as 6 Bellevue Terrace, Mumbles. The cause of death is not stated, but it is likely that the physical strain and health effects of wartime service contributed to his declining condition.

Burial

Frederick Ward was buried at Oystermouth Cemetery, where his grave marks the last of the inter-war military burials within the cemetery’s Great War section.

Legacy

Though much of Frederick Ward’s life remains unrecorded, what survives tells the story of a man who answered the call to serve despite his age. Enlisting at forty-six, he gave several years of loyal service to both the Welsh Regiment and the Royal Defence Corps, helping to secure Britain’s defences during the most testing years of the Great War.

His grave at Oystermouth Cemetery stands as a quiet reminder of the many men whose contributions, though less visible than those at the front, were essential to the nation’s wartime endurance.