Memorial plaque to Lewis Pugh Evans at Llanbadarn Fawr

Image: © Jeremy Bolwell Taken: 12 Feb 2012

Lewis Pugh Evans (what a tremendous West Walian name) was a member of the local gentry, with family ties to British India, who after Eton and Sandhurst was commissioned into that outstanding Scottish infantry regiment (and that's saying something), the Black Watch, serving in the Boer War and later the Great War, with the formative Royal Flying Corps and then the Lincolnshire Regiment, where he earned a Victoria Cross for outstanding gallantry, leadership and soldiering of the first order, leading an attack and achieving his objectives despite wounds. This was no isolated moment of luck or foolhardiness for he was Mentioned in Despatches seven times, also being awarded the Distinguished Service Order - and bar (effectively being awarded it for two separate acts), the Croix de Guerre from France as well as Belgian medals too. After surviving the war and all its horrors he settled locally and married (into the Vaughan-Pryse-Rice family for good measure) until World War II when he served again at the Welsh Division HQ and oversaw the SOE (Special Operations Executive) cloak and dagger war in India against the Japanese. After that war he became an Honorary Colonel of the Parachute Regiment and had attained the rank of Brigadier Gneral. In retirement he was an Honorary Colonel of the Army Cadet Force in Ceredigion and President of the Royal British Legion locally too. He was a Justice of the Peace (JP) and Deputy Lieutenant for the County and a Churchwarden at Llanbadarn Fawr, where he was buried in 1962. What a life.

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