Faced with Mametz

July 1916. The Battle of Mametz Wood comes to a pyrrhic end, shells and liquid fire having torn apart the French landscape. Of the four thousand dead or maimed, the great majority are Welsh. Among them is Private Ellis Williams, a Trawsfynydd farmhand. He grasps for life, his face devastated by shrapnel. Ellis is one of the first to undergo reconstructive facial surgery. Over twenty months at a specialist hospital in Boulogne, he experiences no less than eighteen operations. When he returns home, not even his father is able to identify him. The soldier's memoirs were discovered by his great-nephew after his death. Within them can be found carefree days of childhood, bucolic scenes of a farmhand's life, and the trauma of Mametz Wood. Finally, there is Ellis' struggle to create a new life and identity in post-war Wales. Wth exerpts from Ellis' memoirs, accounts from military personnel, and further research conducted by Garffild Lloyd Lewis, this book pieces together the extraordinary story of an ordinary man transfigured by hell.