Wales in the world wars
Just prior to World War II, a "bombing school" of RAF Penrhos was set up in Penyberth, Caernarfonshire, which received opposition from Welsh nationalists.
Since 1865, the Liberal Party had held a parliamentary majority in Wales and, following the general election of 1906, only one non-Liberal Member of Parliament, Keir Hardie of Merthyr Tydfil, represented a Welsh constituency at Westminster.
The 1st and 2nd battalions of the Royal Welch Fusiliers served on the Western Front from 1914 to 1918 and took part in some of the hardest fighting of the war, including Mametz Wood in 1916 and Passchendaele or Third Ypres in 1917.
[6][full citation needed][7] The Welsh-language poet, Hedd Wyn was part of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers and was killed during the first day of the Battle of Passchendaele during World War I.
Mae'r hen delynau genid gynt, Ynghrog ar gangau'r helyg draw, A gwaedd y bechgyn lond y gwynt, A'u gwaed yn gymysg efo'r glaw Why must I live in this grim age, When, to a far horizon, God Has ebbed away, and man, with rage, Now wields the sceptre and the rod?
[11]: p233 Of the South Wales borderers, the 1st Battalion landed at Le Havre as part of the 3rd Brigade in the 1st Division with the British Expeditionary Force in August 1914 for service on the Western Front.
[18][19] Later the camps such as Frongoch became known as ollscoil na réabhlóide ("Universities of Revolution") where future leaders including Michael Collins, Terence McSwiney and J. J. O'Connell began to plan the coming struggle for independence.
[20][21] Elwyn Edwards, a local councillor, historian and poet suggests that the Irish War of Independence was won in Fongoch in Wales.
[22] Welsh nationalism was ignited in the lead up to the second world war, when in 1936 the UK government settled on establishing the RAF Penrhos bombing school at Penyberth on the Llŷn peninsula in Gwynedd.
[23] The UK government settled on Llŷn as the site for its new bombing school after similar locations in Northumberland and Dorset were met with protests.
[24] However, UK Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin refused to hear the case against the bombing school in Wales, despite a deputation representing half a million Welsh protesters.
[24] Protest against the bombing school was summed up by Saunders Lewis when he wrote that the UK government was intent upon turning one of the 'essential homes of Welsh culture, idiom, and literature' into a place for promoting a barbaric method of warfare.
[26] The Royal Welch Fusilers regiment was awarded 27 battle honours for World War II, with more than 1,200 fusiliers killed in action or died of wounds.
[29] The battalion found itself cut off when the German forces outflanked them, the Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Colonel Francis Matthews, decided to attempt to escape around the enemy and break through to British lines.
[31] In April 1940 the battalion was again transferred to the newly created 24th Guards Brigade (Rupertforce), and took part in the Norwegian Campaign, and were among the first British troops to see action against the German Army in the Second World War.
[34] Bombing raids brought high loss of life as the German Air Force targeted the docks at Swansea, Cardiff and Pembroke.
Near the end of the war it was renamed Special Camp XI and used to detain many senior SS military leaders who were awaiting extradition to the Nuremberg trials.
