大象传媒

My name is Patrick Walsh, and I have been attending a history course for two years, and have written about my own memories, having my war memories published on the bbc history site and other local history sites in Liverpool. I have also written the war memories of my grandfather, also called Patrick Walsh, who served in the Great War.Patrick Walsh was born in 1878, and was the son of Michael Walsh, who was my great-grandfather. Michael Walsh worked in a Bottling factory, and on the 1881 and 1891 census his occupation is Bottler of Beer. He lived at 3 Westmoreland Street in 1881 and in 1891 he lived at no. 3 Bostock Street, off Scotland Road. I believe, from what I been told, that my grandfather served in the Liverpool Kings Regiment in World War I. I would like to find out when he first joined the Kings and to research the time he was stationed in Kent before the War started in 1914.
He told me a few stories about the 1914 war when I was a lad about 12yrs of age. Before the war started he was serving with the Kings Regiment in Kent were he did all his army training with the Kings. He told me he loved the Kent country side and training the soldiers in weapons drill to become part of the Kings Regiment and the time he served in France between 1914-1918 world war.
He told me about living in the trenches in the front line. The conditions were appalling. The trenches were covered in mud through the heavy rain and snowy weather, also a barrage of German shell fire day and night would turn the battle field into a sea of mud if you ventured out on to the battlefield you could end up drowned in a sea of mud for there were shell holes and craters all over the battle field through the heavy German shelling. The battlefields he fought in the front line were the town of Ypres and the village of Passendale in the countryside of Belgium. The Kings Regiment left Kent for France shipped out as soon as the 1914 war started.
My grandfather Patrick Walsh served is time in the 1914 War in the Kings Regiment, the 8th Irish Regiment, and finished in the South Lancashire Regiment. He was in the Battles Ypres and Passendale. I am not certain about the sector of Ypres front line he fought. He mentioned being in the Trenches alongside French, Canadian, and American also Scottish and Ghurkha soldiers. He told me the British Regiments all ways fought in the middle of the frontline supported by different regiments from the commonwealth and allied countries. My grandfather told me that rum was given to the soldiers to give them courage for going over the top of the trench, but normally the soldiers would just point the rifle over the top and fire it blindly as they would get shot if they put their head over. My grandfather was sent out to search for a patrol which had been missing. He had lost his stripes and he and two other ex-sergeants were picked out to search no-mans land with a promise that he would get his stripes back. They found the lost patrol was part of the 51st Ireland Division. They had been killed and mutilated and my grandfather and his two mates retrieved their papers and tags and brought them back to the Allied line. While he was in the frontline he received a message saying is wife Anne Walsh died in a house fire washing the baby in front of a coal fire, her long dress had caught fire and she died soon after of pneumonia. She had been living in an old Courthouse in Horatio Street off Scotland Road. Her sister Charlotte Quinn brought up the children, Michael, my father Edward, and Mary Walsh with her own daughter Ann Quinn.