'Act as soon as I think. Sometimes sorry after, sometimes not… Impulsive. Born in me. Been like it all my life.' So said Harry Daniels when speaking about a colourful and courageous army career that was very nearly cut short almost 40 years earlier. Indeed, according to some reports he had actually been dead since 1915! That was when newspapers carried the erroneous news that he had been killed in action while serving on the Western Front. Those same accounts presented eulogies in honour of a man whose adventurous life already read like a real-life ripping yarn. Born in Norfolk, the 13th of 16 children, he had been orphaned and sent to a boys’ home in Norwich.
A spirited lad nicknamed ‘Spitfire’, he ran away to sea once and joined the army at 18. Rising quickly through the ranks, he was a company sergeant major in the 2nd Rifle Brigade when he earned his Victoria Cross at Neuve Chapelle in March 1915. Confronted by a seemingly impenetrable barrier of barbed wire, he called out to his great friend, Cpl Tom Noble, to 'get some nippers' and off they dashed straight into a storm of fire. Working valiantly in broad daylight in full view of the enemy trenches a few yards away, they cut a short part way through the wire, before first Daniels was wounded, with a bullet through his left thigh, and then Noble was shot dead.For all their desperate courage, the subsequent attack came to nothing and it was not until nightfall that Daniels was able to drag himself to safety. Lionised in his home county, he survived further wounds and his premature obituary to add a Military Cross to his hard-earned VC.
The humble baker’s son rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel and added to his exceptional cv participation in the 1920 Antwerp Olympics as a member of the British boxing team. After retiring from the army, he became a popular manager of the Grand Theatre in Leeds. On the Royal guest list for the Queen’s Coronation in 1953, Daniels was not able to take his place among the great and the good. Shortly before the ceremony, he suffered a heart attack. A few weeks later pneumonia set in and, in December the same year, newspapers carried the sad news that the man known as ‘Dan VC’ was dead - and this time there really was no mistake.
Stephen Snelling is the author of three books in The History Press series, VCs of the First World War, a biographical survey of the men awarded the country’s highest award for bravery in every theatre of war on land, sea and in the air.