Merfyn Daniel Evans – Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve

Flight Lieutenant Merfyn Daniel Evans – Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve

Merfyn Daniel Evans was born in 1913 in Treboeth, Swansea, the son of John Evans and Catherine Evans. His early life unfolded within the northern districts of Swansea, where professional families lived alongside the industrial communities of Morriston and Llangyfelach.

Family Life

1921 Census

The 1921 Census records the Evans family residing at Plasycoed House, Morriston. Merfyn’s father, John Evans, aged 57 and born in Carmarthenshire, worked as a Clerk and Accountant for the Mond Nickel Company (Nickel Works) — one of the major industrial employers in the Swansea Valley. His wife Catherine, aged 47, managed the household. Their only child present was Merfyn Daniel, aged 8, who was attending school. The census portrays a stable, respectable family rooted in the professional class of early twentieth‑century Swansea.

Military Service

As a young man, Merfyn joined the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, rising to the rank of Flight Lieutenant. He was based at RAF Harrogate, Yorkshire, a major administrative and training centre during the Second World War. Officers stationed there were often involved in personnel management, training oversight, and the coordination of aircrew movements across the RAF’s expanding wartime structure.

Illness and Death

On 15 October 1943, Flight Lieutenant Evans died at RAF Hospital Kirkham, the cause recorded as pulmonary tuberculosis. Tuberculosis remained a serious and often fatal illness during the war years, exacerbated by the pressures of service life, close living conditions, and the strain placed on the body by military duties.

Burial

Merfyn’s body was brought home to Swansea, where he was laid to rest at Bethel Calvinistic Methodist Church, Llangyfelach. His grave stands among those of the chapel community that shaped his early life, a quiet testament to a young officer whose service ended not in combat, but through the unseen hardships of wartime illness.