Hardington’s D-Day Warrior
Introduction
One of the men commemorated on Hardington’s memorial has the special distinction of having participated in the D-Day landings in Normandy in June 1944. Private Wilfred John Rawlins served with the second battalion of the East Yorkshire regiment, the unit tasked with capturing Sword Beach on the eastern side of the battlefront and advancing inland.
The soldiers were transported overnight from Portsmouth aboard Royal Navy ships and then loaded onto landing craft for the assault on the beach. They faced fierce resistance the moment they landed, with heavy artillery and machine gun fire raining down on them, resulting in the deaths of scores of men within the first few minutes.
Wilfred himself was killed either on the first or second day of the battle at the age of just twenty-two. His grave is located in the Hermanville War Cemetery.
His family background
Wilfred’s life must be understood in the context of his family circumstances, particularly the experiences of his father, Ernest William. Ernest was born at Taunton on 14 August 1885, the son of a house painter. As a young man, he moved to South Wales to work as a miner at the Abercynon Colliery.[1] On 5 October 1914, he enlisted in the Welch Regiment with the number 16097 and served in the 10th Battalion and the 21st Battalion.[2] He probably received some training at Kinmel Park, a large training camp on the North Wales coast, which opened in March 1915.[3] While stationed there, he met a local woman named Alice Maud Dexter, whose late father, Christopher Dexter, had worked as a gamekeeper on the Gwrych Castle estate of the Countess of Dundonald, a prominent noblewoman and philanthropist of the day.
On 2 December 1915, Ernest was sent to France, but the harsh conditions caused or exacerbated a lung tubercle, leading to his discharge from the army on 25 March 1916.[4] While Ernest was in the army, Alice probably lived with her widowed mother at Sea Road Cottage, Abergele. Ernest and Alice’s first child was born at Abergele around March 1916.[5] After leaving the army, Ernest joined his family at Abergele, and he and Alice had five more children, including Wilfred and his twin brother, Albert, who were born on 29 April 1922.[6]
However, their third child, Phyllis Elizabeth, was born at Upcott Cottage, Bishop’s Hull, on 21 November 1919. This address also appears in army pension records, indicating that the family spent some time in Somerset.[7] On Phyllis’s birth certificate, Ernest identified himself as a coal miner, but it is unclear whether this was his occupation at that time or a reference to his earlier work.
In the mid-1920s, the family may have been affected by changes in the ownership of the estate. The Countess of Dundonald died on 16 January 1924, leaving Gwrych Castle to King George V in the hope that it would become the residence of the Prince of Wales. When he refused the gift, it passed to the Venerable Order of Saint John, which in 1928 sold it to the Countess’s former husband.[8]
The death of Emma’s mother died in May or June 1926 at the age of 77, probably prompted plans to relocate. However, the family did not leave immediately, as Ernest and Alice’s last child, Arthur, was born in North Wales on 11 May 1927.
By September 1939, they were living at Hardington Marsh, though how they came to be there is unknown. The family had no previous connection with the village and no relatives living nearby. Furthermore, Ernest had no experience in farm work and, in any case, was too ill to work. A possible explanation is that he wanted to return to Somerset, and the property at Hardington Marsh was affordable to rent. The 1939 Register shows the family living near the railway cottages. Ernest was a disabled pensioner, while his seventeen-year-old sons, Wilfred and Albert, both worked as farmhands. Ernest’s health was extremely poor by that time, as he died on 14 February 1940 from bronchiectasis at the age of 55.[9]
The following year, Wilfred enlisted in the East Yorkshire Regiment (The Duke of York’s Own), serving in the 2nd battalion with the regimental number 11266619.[10] At that time, the battalion bolstered Britain’s defences on the south coast in response to the threat of invasion before later training in Scotland to prepare for an invasion of mainland Europe. On 6 June 1944, the battalion participated in Operation Overlord, and Wilfred lost his life on the first or second day of the campaign.[11]
Post-war
Alice died in 1957 at the age of 66. In 1950, Albert married Gladys Voizey, and they lived at Vale Farm until his death in 1981. It is poignant to reflect that if you remember Gladys’s husband, you can imagine how Wilfred might have been had he survived the war unscathed.
References
[1] RG15/623, ED 1, sch. 44. It has been assumed that the record of Wilfred’s occupation relates to his time before the First World War.
[2] Silver War Badge Records, 1914-1920; World War I Service Medal and Award Rolls, 1914-1920
[3] Liverpool Daily Post, 19 February 1915, p.6.
[4] World War I Pension Ledgers and Index Cards, 1914-1923. One record states that the war aggravated his condition, and another that it caused it.
[5] RG15/623, ED 1, sch. 44.
[6] 1939 Register.
[7] Birth certificate of Phyllis Elizabeth Rawlins; UK, World War I Pension Ledgers and Index Cards, 1914-1923.
[8] Wikipedia articles on the Countess of Dundonald and Gwrych Castle, accessed 30 July 2025.
[9] Death certificate of Ernest William Rawlins.
[10] Army Roll of Honour, 1939-45.
[11] https://i-yorkshire.com/d-day-and-the-east-yorkshire-regiment/ (accessed 30 July 12025).
