Lieutenant-Colonel Humprey Williams
1st Battalion, Royal Welch Fusiliers
7th Battalion, Royal Welch Fusiliers

Colonel Humphrey Williams was … actually, he resigned, for somewhile we’d be trying to work out why he resigned. We know from his own personal diary that when he was put in command, he had certain doubts about whether he would be acceptable to the battalion. He was acceptable. He was a superb leader of men.

(Michael Anthony Demetriadi, IWM interview, Dec 2007)

Born on 2 June 1908 in Resolven, Glamorgan, Wales, Albert Humphrey Williams was a schoolteacher and Territorial Army officer, commissioned with the 7th (Montgomeryshire) Battalion, Royal Welch Fusiliers since 1932. He mobilized with the 1st Battalion and was wounded during the Battle of France in May 1940. He became to second-in-command when the 1st RWF was sent to the Far East to fight the Japanese in the Burma campaign.

In March 1943, he was promoted to commanding officer, but faced some opposition from English regular officers in the 2nd RWF over his ethnic and class background. Although the battalion suffered a defeat at Donbaik on 18 March, Williams’ “conspicuous courage, coolness and devotion to duty” earned the D.S.O. As Japanese translators could intercept messages in English, Williams broadcast his orders in Welsh, although none of his English officers spoke the language. Emphasizing the colonel’s commitment to Welsh, officer Michael Demetriadi recalled once seeing William reading a letter from home: “And he suddenly said ‘Oh god.’ I said ‘Humphrey what’s the trouble?’ … ‘The children are starting to speak English!’”

By September 1943, he resigned command seemingly under pressure from higher-ups I the regiment. One of Williams’ officers later stated, “In the eyes of the officers of the pre-war regular army, they didn’t really trust anyone who was not an ‘officer and a gentleman.’” His officers appealed for Williams to be reinstated but was replaced by Lieutenant-Colonel Garnett Braithwaite of the 2nd Battalion, RWF.

1/RWF’s Welsh schoolmaster would not have been part of that pattern. Despite his evident military ability, Lieutenant Colonel Humphrey Williams lacked the appropriate origins and status … Williams’ everyman style of contemporary military leadership contrasted with the aristocratic traditions of the Royal Welch, and was presumably part of the occasion of his undoing

(Tarak Barkawi, Soldiers of Empire, 273-276)

Williams returned to the United Kingdom where after a demotion to major he was made commanding officer of his original Territorial unit, 7th Battalion, Royal Welch Fusiliers in the 53rd Welsh Division. The formation deployed to Normandy in late June 1944, but Williams was badly wounded less than a month later at Caen. He was succeeded by Lieutenant-Colonel G.F.T.B. Dickson.

He received the OBE in the 1946 King’s Birthday Honours. After the war, Williams worked for the BBC and was appointed Director of Education in 1947. He died on 7 December 1983 in Gwynedd, Wales.