大象传媒

The initial attraction of joining up, for Danny Walsh at least, was the lure of danger, heroism and glamour, so often associated then with the career of a soldier in wartime. He had followed the war avidly in the newspapers from the start of it in 1939 when he was 15 years old, and hoped that it would last until he could join up - it did. This opportunity to join up created a sharp contrast to the more dismal atmosphere of life at home in Leeds. Only with the accumulation of experience in this role could the image of war be reflected in a truer light.

It was on the 18 November, 1942, at the age of eighteen, that Danny Walsh, full of apprehension, excitement and optimism, made his way to Leeds Railway Station. He and his father, Joseph Walsh, had boarded a tram which would take them into Leeds city centre, from where they walked towards the railway station. Dad bought his father five woodbine cigarettes, which cost a couple of pennies. His father did not want to go onto the platform, so they said their goodbyes outside the station. He told his son to 'take care of yourself, and I'll see you when you get some leave.'

Perhaps because it brought back memories of his own years of soldiering in The Great War, or maybe because he knew something of what lay ahead for his son, he could not see him onto the train. So, waiting on the platform alone, apart from many other new recruits - strangers with a common aim - stood Danny Walsh, willing his exterior to belie his inner anxiety and striving to maintain an air of unflappable coolness.

The awaited train finally arrived and transported these recruits to Durham for the initial six weeks training in the General Service Corps. This training took place at Brancepeth Castle, which is about three miles outside Durham, and seemed to be a rather pointless exercise to the keen, impatient young soldiers who had joined the army to see some action, and not to learn the finer points of saluting officers! However, after the six weeks, it was into the Durham Light Infantry that Private Danny Walsh found himself for three months, before being transferred into the signals of an artillery regiment in the 9th Armoured Division. The division sign was a black and white panda which was sewn on, padded out and proudly worn by the regiment.

This placing was to continue for nearly two years, with the troops being involved in manoeuvres and exercises. One of these exercises had a big impact on dad and was known as exercise Spartan. As the name suggests this involved ten days without food, water, shelter or comfort of any kind for the soldiers. They had to survive solely on their own merits off the land, it was a gruelling experience. The local people were informed not to aid the soldiers in any way, so they had to eat vegetables from the fields and just about anything else that they could find. There were some soldiers who did not survive the task. They had crawled under a tank to sleep but there was heavy rain throughout the night and the tank sank into the muddy ground killing those beneath it.

After about two years the 9th Armoured Division was disbanded. It had been involved in constant manoeuvres up and down the country, and 'volunteers' were asked to join other regiments. Dad joined the 53rd Welsh Division, the division sign was a red underlined W, and he went overseas to Normandy around mid June 1944. From this point on the war became a reality for dad who found that exercises like Spartan had been really useful, especially when he found himself in the dense Reichswald Forest, Germany, in a freezing, wet and muddy winter for about a month. The 53rd Welsh Division were always well up front and in the thick of things, and dad being a despatch/OP rider often found himself in tricky situations. He wondered in later years how he had managed to come through it all, mostly unscathed, as his mate Peacock, also a despatch rider, had been killed about a week before the war ended.

In the months following the end of the war, dad was in Hamburg. He said it was flattened, and many of the people left were living underground. They were all starving and dad and the other soldiers would save a bit of their rations to give to the little kids who often hung around. People would be out cleaning the bricks in the day-time ready to re-build. One old woman always stuck in dad's mind. She was sitting amongst the ruins, crying and repeating, 'Alles ist veloren, das kreig ist kaput' which I believe translates to something like 'All is lost, the war is finished.' After some months in Hamburg, dads unit was to embark on a new journey. The voyage they took this time was to an unknown destination which eventually turned out to be Palestine. The insignia they had to wear here was a white triangle, and this is where he would stay until 1947 when he was demobbed.

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