MY father, Sergeant Tom Walsh, served with the King’s Liverpool Regiment from 1914 to 1918 as a platoon sergeant who specialised in bayonet training.
Bayonet training didn’t simply teach you how to fight with a length of sharpened steel, it taught you specifically how to kill a man standing two feet in front of you with it.
His discharge papers in 1918 state that ‘he commanded his platoon in action on a number of occasions’. His brigade general had added a hand written note ‘he was a credit to his regiment’.
I never had the opportunity to ask my father what was meant by a number of occasions. I can imagine it takes a degree of courage to lead men into your first bayonet charge but after the ensuing carnage what qualities do you need to lead them again?
THOMAS WALSH Appleton
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