'Call Them to Remembrance'

A native of Cardiff who played alongside Gareth Edwards in the 1965 Welsh Secondary Schools team and later played for Cambridge University, Gwyn Prescott was awarded an MPhil, on the history of rugby, by the University of Glamorgan and is author of several books including 'This rugby spellbound people' - The Birth of Rugby in Cardiff and Wales (St David's Press, 2015).

• Foreword by Gerald DaviesRichard Davies Garnons Williams Charles Gerald TaylorLouis Augustus PhillipsCharles Meyrick PritchardDavid WestacottRichard ThomasJohn Lewis WilliamsPhilip Dudley WallerBrinley Richard LewisHorace Wyndham ThomasWilliam Purdon GeenFred Leonard PerrettDavid Watts

'These pages contain an unexplored and untold tale which, from the deepest anguish of the suffering born of their unquestioning bravery, pierces the heart...This book is [an] acknowledgment of the sacrifice made by 13 Welshmen...Theirs was a sacrifice which needs to be told...Gwyn Prescott, with meticulous and sympathetic attention to detail, tells the story. This narrative is an essential record'. Gerald Davies, from the Foreword; 'From the boisterous singing and exhilarating cheers of Cardiff Arms Park to the deafening roar of artillery shells and gunfire, these humbling stories describe thirteen individual journeys which began on muddy yet familiar Welsh playing fields but ended in the unimaginable brutality of the battles of the First World War. These are men who experienced two very different kinds of glory.' Dan Allsobrook, gwladrugby; 'This is a book which moves as well as informs, combining impeccable scholarship with deep human sympathy. In recounting the active lives and terrible deaths of the 13 Welsh internationals who died in the First World War Gwyn Prescott not only offers a fitting tribute to their sacrifice but paints a vividly compelling picture of Wales, and the increasingly important role that rugby played in Welsh life, in the decades leading up to 1914.' Huw Richards, Associate Lecturer in Sports History, London College of Communication