[3] Following a year at Sandhurst, Evans entered the British Army with a commission in the Black Watch as second lieutenant on 23 December 1899, and served with the 2nd battalion in the Second Boer War in South Africa.

After the end of the conventional war he served with his battalion in the Orange River Colony during the Boer guerrilla warfare until peace was declared in June 1902.

[4] Following the end of the war in South Africa he left Point Natal for British India on the SS Ionian in October 1902 with other officers and men of his battalion, which after arrival in Bombay was stationed in Sialkot in Umballa in Punjab.

When the First World War broke out in the summer of 1914 he was posted as an air observer with the Royal Flying Corps, and from May 1915 served as a brigade major,[6] but after a few months he returned to the Black Watch and in 1917 was appointed to command the 1st Battalion, Lincolnshire Regiment.

While a strong machine gun emplacement was causing casualties, and the troops were working round the flank, Lt.-Col. Evans rushed at it himself and by firing his revolver through the loophole forced the garrison to capitulate.

[14][15] Pugh Evans was Honorary Colonel of the Army Cadet Force in Ceredigion and was for 25 years President of the Aberystwyth Branch of the Royal British Legion.

He was a Churchwarden at Llanbadarn Fawr, where he now lies buried, and a Justice of the Peace on the local bench as well as Deputy Lieutenant for Cardiganshire[16] and a Freeman of the borough of Aberystwyth.