James Davies is not commemorated on the Newmarket war memorial. However his death is recorded on a Record of Service card which is held in the Flintshire Record Office.
The person who filled in the card in 1919 made a mistake regarding James’ service number. They gave his address as 1 Byron Street, Newmarket and although it is signed ‘ late widow, Cissie L Prydderch’ someone has written in pencil – ‘widow no longer resident in Newmarket’.
We know from ‘UK Soldiers Died in the Great War’ that James was born near Llandudno and that this is where he enlisted very early on in the war. He fought with the 9th Battalion, Royal Welsh Fusiliers and he died in action in France.
On the 25th of September 1915 he was presumed dead. Along with 20,000 other men who fell in the Battle of Loos and whose bodies were never found his name is on the Loos Memorial in France.
Dud Corner Cemetery stands almost on the site of a German strong point, the Lens Road Redoubt, captured by the 15th (Scottish) Division on the first day of the battle. The name “Dud Corner” is believed to be due to the large number of unexploded enemy shells found in the neighbourhood after the Armistice. The Loos Memorial commemorates over 20,000 officers and men who have no known grave, who fell in the area from the River Lys to the old southern boundary of the First Army, east and west of Grenay. On either side of the cemetery is a wall 15 feet high, to which are fixed tablets on which are carved the names of those commemorated. At the back are four small circular courts, open to the sky, in which the lines of tablets are continued, and between these courts are three semicircular walls or apses, two of which carry tablets, while on the centre apse is erected the Cross of Sacrifice (Commonwealth War Graves website)
The Register of Soldier’s Effects shows that Cissie received his outstanding wages and the War Gratuity – a sum of £8/14/8 ( £8 pounds, fourteen shillings and eight pence)
By 1919 she had presumably remarried.