A man who was curious about the 71 names on Pontnewydd War Memorial has created a website to record the stories of hundreds of people from Cwmbran who gave their lives in service.
Steve Bushby started by researching the fallen soldiers commemorated on the memorial at the junction of Lowlands Road and Clark Avenue. He continued his research and has now uncovered details about almost 500 soldiers
His ‘Cwmbran War Memorials’ website includes some stories about those buried in church graveyards and those listed on memorials in places including Henllys Village Hall and the Salvation Army Hall in Old Cwmbran.
He said: “As I’m getting older, I have to go to the doctors in Pontnewydd more often. I’d walk past that memorial and could see all those names, and I thought, ‘who are these people?’, nobody knows, everybody’s forgotten.
500 names
“So I thought it would be a good idea to find out who they were, so we did. And then I extended it to the rest of Cwmbran as well so there’s something like 500 names now.
“There are interesting stories, including one man who picked up a grenade, which killed him, to protect his friends. All he got was a regimental inquiry to see it was a self-inflicted wound, something that nowadays you’d get an award for, or a George Cross.”
The heading on his website is: “This database preserves the memory of those from Cwmbran who gave their lives in service to their country. Each name represents a life lived, a sacrifice made, and a family forever changed.”