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College celebrates US wartime links

From the Wiltshire Times, first published Friday 17th Feb 2006.

THE night before D-Day, Private Joseph Walsh crept out of his military quarters in Lackham to tell his fiance Eileen Brunt he was leaving for France.

On his return he faced arrest so in the dead of night, Eileen's father Percy, a local farmer, guided him across the fields, avoiding the American sentries. Pte Walsh was just one soldier with the 10th Armoured Infantry Battalion of the 4th Armoured Division of the United States Army, commanded by General George Patton.

His testimony, along with that of hundreds of other American soldiers based at Lackham, had a profound impact on the area. Now because of Lackham's links to the US Army it has been chosen to stage a play about the country's Civil War.

The Southampton-based Nuffield Youth Theatre will perform Broken Hallelujah, at The Avon Hall, Wiltshire College Lackham, at 1.30pm and 7.30pm, on Thursday, February 23.

Sharman Macdonald's play is set in 1864 in the smoky hollows of war-torn Petersburg, Virginia, where two girls have a life-altering encounter with one Confederate and two Union soldiers.

The play explores the effects of the American Civil War on young soldiers and citizens, focusing on parallels with the war in Iraq.

Fran Morley, director of the Nuffield Youth Theatre, said: "We wanted to perform the play at Lackham because it had a certain resonance and because of the American involvement in the war.

"It didn't matter so much what the soldiers were doing there it was the fact that they were there."

During the period 1943 to 1944, Lackham was the headquarters for the 10th Armoured Infantry Battalion of the 4th Armoured Division of the 3rd US Army, commanded by General Patton .

On June 6, 1944, Allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy. The battles were seen as a pivotal point of the war. After D-Day, Lackham House became a rehabilitation centre for wounded service personnel. After the war it became an agricultural training college.

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