In memory of Robert Percival Weeks
Robert Percival Weeks was the younger son of Mr and Mrs William Weeks. They lived at Heathcote, Brynmawr. William was a butcher and wholesale cattle dealer whose father Jonah had run the business for more than 50 years.
After his schooling, Robert joined the family business. He emigrated to Canada in March 1915 but soon set sail again, this time for New Zealand. He moved on to Australia, where he enlisted with the Australian Infantry Force in Melbourne. In January 1916, he embarked at Sydney with the 19th Battalion on the HMAT Runic.
In 1917 he took part in the fighting at Passchendaele, Belgium. On the morning of 20 September, his platoon had gained its objective, north of the Menin Road, when a shell exploded close to a group of four soldiers standing together. The blast killed three of them, including Private Weeks, and injured the fourth.
Robert’s relatives at Heathcote were officially told that he was killed instantaneously. A platoon officer, whose hand was wounded by the same blast, wrote to Robert’s father and sister to say that Robert had been buried at Gordon House. However, in internal correspondence the officer wrote: “As a matter of fact he was completely blown to atoms and there was nothing at all to bury.”
In October 1919, long after the war had ended, William Weeks wrote to the Australian Red Cross to ask again for details of Robert’s “place of burial in France” for which he was “patiently waiting”.
Robert is commemorated on the Menin Gate memorial in Ypres.
Return to Brynmawr war memorial page
