Randal Alexander Casson

Alec Casson

11/10/1893 - 26/9/1917

Randal Alexander Casson
Randal Alexander Casson. Photo: Passchendaele Museum.
Born	11/10/1893
Died	26/9/1917
FR People | WHR People

Bron-y-Garth was the last known residence of 2nd Lieutenant Randall Alexander Casson (Alec to his family) whose Army unit was 2 Battalion Royal Welch Fusiliers (2RWF). His parents bought Bron-y-Garth from George Percy Spooner and the wider Casson Family owned Diffwys Quarry near the FR station, Duffws. He was born in Chelsea and was the only child of Randall and Lucy Jane Casson who also had Betchton House, Cheshire. He was educated at Sandroyd School (a school founded by the grandson of Charles Wesley and near Salisbury) and moved in September 1911 to Winchester College. He moved from Winchester to Christ Church, Oxford where he was in the University Contingent of the Officers' Training Corps. He went to Sandhurst when war broke out in 1914 and completed a shortened course of officer training. He commenced service in September 1915 with a commission in 2RWF. At the time of his death he was acting adjutant of 2RWF. An adjutant is a administrative assistant to a more senior officer, usually the commanding officer of a unit. His 19th Brigade in which the 2RWF was placed, was part of 33rd Divison. He was killed in action at Polygon Wood, Zonnebeke, near Ypres at Black Watch Corner when a shell landed in a crater where he and Major Poore and another officer were sheltering. They had taken shelter as it was thought a safer place to be under artillery barrage than in the adjacent strong-point and pill-box called Black Watch Corner. Ironically there was a direct hit by an artillery shell on their crater whereas the strong-point escaped damage.

He was initially buried near Black Watch Corner and then his remains were recovered and identified on 14 June 1923. They were exhumed and interred at Poelcapelle British Cemetery, Plot LV, Row F, Grave 12.

Siegfried Sassoon in the first draft of his book, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, mentions Casson several times and describes him as "a sensitive refined youth, and an amazing gossip." In the same book he says:

"The snow had stopped when, at the end of eight miles, we bivouacked in the dregs of daylight, by a sunked road near Mercatel..... Casson and I spent a night in a very small dugout. How we got in I can't remember, but we considered ourselves to be lucky to be sitting round a little brazier talking to the trench mortar sergeant major and two signallers who occupied that coke-fumed den"; and on Friday April 13th Sassoon wrote: "When Casson was at Winchester he did not anticipate that he would ever be walking about on a fine April evening among a lot of dead men. It struck me as unnatural at the moment, probably because the stretcher bearers had been identifying the bodies and had arranged them in seemly attitudes, their heads pillowed on their haversacks. Young Casson was trying to behave as if it were all quite ordinary; he was having his first look at the horrors of war. While we were on the hill there was a huge explosion down by Fontaine Wood, as though a dump had been blown up. On our way home we stopped to inspect a tank which had got stuck in the mud while crossing a wide trench. But I was thinking to myself that sensitive people like Casson ought not to be taken to battle-fields. I had grown accustomed to such sights, but I was able to realise the impact they made on a fresh mind. Detached from the fighting, we had merely gone for a short walk after tea, so to speak, and I couldn't help feeing as if I'd been showing Casson something obscene. (Nine years afterwards the whole business has become incredible) Unfortunately young Casson is not alive to share my sense of the incredibility of that little evening walk."

Can one surmise that a lad who spent time at least on holidays in Wales at Bron-y-Garth in his growing years might have been a bit of an FR enthusiast? With his family's social position and connections he will have had every opportunity to inspect the FR from close quarters.

Alec's father, also Randal Casson, was senior partner in Breese, Jones & Casson a firm of solicitors. When this Randal died in 1914, his wife Lucy, Alec's mother, drew two black horizontal lines in her visitors book and wrote 'Randall died at Taormina Ap2d [2nd April] Thursday'. Taormina is a city on the south east shore of Sicily.

Reference

Info received by Mark Temple on 5/5/2026 from Wouter De Witte, digitization specialist of the Passchendaele Archives, Belgium. Web site: (https://archives.passchendaele.be/en/soldier/837)